Conall's Boat Build

Bulwark doors

2012-01-24T06:21:00.010-05:00

Both the fore deck of my trawler and the aft deck are surrounded by a 36" tall bulwark, and to get on board the boat, and move from the pilot house to the fore deck, I had to create doors to pass through the bulwark.

If you look up the definition of bulwark you will find phrase's such as a wall like structure raised for the purpose of defense. Basically, the bulwark is a solid steel fence surrounding the boat. Most boats use a handrail type system of stanchions and rails ( either pipe or wire for the rails). I like the solid bulwark, and although heavy, it adds a huge level of security to life on deck. On the fore deck, I added a 1 1/2" stainless steel pipe handrail to the top of the bulwark, giving me a finished height of about 44"... pretty comfortable height. I've yet to add a hand rail to the aft deck as I am worried about interfering with the view as the aft deck will be the sun downer lounge.

The aft deck has two doors to use to gain access to the boat depending on how she is moored. The choice to get on board will either be by using the swim platform, and up the three steps to the deck, or using steps on the dock, the through the bulwark on the starboard side.

The wheel house is protected from the fore deck by another type of bulwark called a Portuguese Bridge. This is basically the same as the deck bulwarks, but much taller @ 46". The Portuguese Bridge will allow one to leave the wheel house while at sea with a greater sense of security. The Portuguese bridge also adds a huge level of protection to the wheel house in rougher times when green water might be getting to the fore deck. To get from the wheel house to the fore deck, you have to pass through the third door I had to fabricate.

The bulwarks and the Portuguese bridge are one of the architectural details to this boat that makes the boat more blue water capable.

The doors are hinged by a simple 1/2" stainless steel pins that have the door sliding over the pin. To make the hinges, I welded heavy walled tube to a tab, then fit the 1/2" pin to the tube. To avoid having to turn the pins, and bore the tubes, I used material with the same outside diameter and inside diameter. Since the pins and tubes are the same ID and OD, I knurled the pin at the pin/tube interface to create an interference fit between the pin and the tube. I removed a few thousandths of the pin on the door side while I had them in the lathe for a smooth action of the door on the hinge. The pins can be removed with a punch and hammer. While I was in the hinge making mode, I decide to make and extra set of pins for all the doors and add them to the spare parts inventory for the boat.

I wanted a simple, robust way to latch the doors closed, so I decided to fabricate a dogs for the doors. To make the door dog, I used 3/4" stainless rod, and rounded over the ends on the lathe using a round over bit. I then bored a 1/2" hole through the handle. On the door side of the dog, I used some 5/8" stainless round stock, and turned about an 1 1/4" of the stock down to 1/2". I then used the lathe to cut threads on the now 1/2" piece to fit 13 TPI nuts. I'm using nyloc nuts so that the action of the handle will not loosen the nut as the handle is turned. All the doors will land against a wooden jamb that I will bolt the the bulwark frame, then the door dog will be turned against a stainless steel wear plate screwed to the wooden jamb to lock the doors down fast. I might add a gasket between the door and the jamb to help help with keeping paint on the door edge.

The doors are painted the green color of the hull on the outside and the off white color of the bulwark on the inside. The green paint went on the doors great, but I had some problems with the white paint. For some reason the white did not want to atomize, and I found myself with my first paint problem. I tried some reducer in the paint, but that make the paint to thin, and it would not stay vertical so I got some sags. My paint supplier is helping me work this problem out, and once I get a handle on the problem, I'll finish painting the doors and post some installed pictures.

I've tried to repaint the white on the doors by tweaking a few things with not much luck. One thing I have discovered is that the acrylic urethane paint I'm using is extremely tough. Because I'm unhappy with the finish of the white, I've had to sand the poor finish back down to provide a smooth substrate for the next coat of paint. This is the first time I've ever had to sand this paint, and given what I've experienced, I can promise all of you who are reading is that this paint will have excellent abrasion and toughness, and will give me years and years of service.

Port lights

2011-12-30T07:17:00.017-05:00

I have seven port lights on the boat and all of them are fixed, non opening lights. The reason I decided to use fixed lights were for two reasons. Reason number one was the designer of the boat was not to keen on opening lights given how close to the water line the port lights would be ( about 3' amid ship, 4.5' on the forward light), and the other reason was for cost savings. The cost savings are a result of me fabricating the port lights and not buying commercially made lights. Including the 1/2" tempered glass, gasket material, and screws, I have less than $250.00 in building all seven port lights. This small amount of money is encouraging, but hopefully is not something that will bite me in the ass years down the road once we start using the boat.

My primary concern with fixed port lights is of me having cut off ventilation to the cabin area of the boat. Because the port lights are fixed, I had to pay closer attention to how I was going to keep the air fresh and flowing in to the cabins. The kids cabin has a 20" x 20" ocean hatch along with two 5" dorade style vents. The hatch will be open when possible, and the dorade style vents will be operable more often that not. The thing I like about the dorade/cowl style vent is that we can leave them open while we are not on the boat so fresh air continues to circulate. The kids cabin also has 12 volt fans. The master cabin has two 6" dorade/cowl style vents and two 4" dorade/cowl style vents. The master cabin also has 12 volt fans. The lower cabin area has a dedicated, marine style, 12,000 btu air conditioning unit.

I recessed the port lights in to the hull 5 1/2" which made the lights flush with the interior trim. I really like the the way the recessed light looks on the exterior hull, and I also like the flush look of the interior trim of the light. The recess of the port light was fabricated using all stainless steel. Given that I was going to bolt the glass to the hull using a clamp ring, and how difficult it was going to be to not mar the metal flange, stainless was the only material I could use to insure that no rust stains would originate from the port light. With the flange of the port light so close to the interior trim, having the metal sweat was another big concern for me. I painted the flange with insulating paint, and also installed a closed cell gasket on the interior face of the flange. The wood trim rings then covers the gasket and flange, so all you see is glass and wood.

To give the exterior recess a more refined look, I flared the recess out 7 degrees. The 7 degree flare made fabricating the recess spigot a bit of a challenge, but once I figured out the cuts, the job was fairly simple. The port light recess spigot consists of five parts: the flange, the two end piece's and the two center piece's. The two end piece's are what make the 7 degree flare, and in order to help the weld up go easier, I bent the end piece's on a jig I built to work on my log splitter. I also built a jig for welding the spigots so all the spigots would be identical. All of this work happened a few years ago, so all of the above post is a re cap.

The current job regarding the port lights was getting the glass installed. All through the port light building process, I had made and save templates of the various parts. Having the templates in the shop has saved me the time and hassle of having to re figure everything and allows me to easily fabricate parts like the 14 additional gaskets I had to cut to get the glass installed.

Each piece of 1/2" tempered glass is held in place by a stainless steel clamp ring. After I fabricated the clamp rings, I sand blasted them to help the paint stick to the rings. The ring is bolted to the spigot flange using (14) 1/4" stainless machine screws and nyloc nuts. There is an 1/8" closed cell foam gasket glued to the flange using contact cement, the glass, and then the stainless clamp ring with another 1/8" closed cell foam gasket glued to the clamp ring. So, basically, if you can envision a glass sandwich of gasket flange, glass, and gasket clamp ring, you can sort of see my design. I did not bolt any of the port lights to any of the interior timber framing, rather all the lights are bolted to the flange only. In my eyes, this was critical to not allow any wood movement to cause nuts and bolts to loosen. In the bathroom, I did use four longer bolts to bolt the trim ring to the port light flange as there was no other way to fasten the wooden trim ring.

Installing the glass was a two person job. One person on the outside dealing with the parts install, and one on the inside holding the nyloc nuts so the screws could be torqued. Even though I used a jig to weld the spigots together, the flange is not perfectly flat. The lack of flatness is not hatefull, maybe .080 across the length of the 19" flange, but it's possible presence gave me enough concern to be careful in how much torque I used while tightening the screws. I torqued the screws enough to start compressing the gaskets, and no more. The nylon nuts will prevent the screws from loosening up. While the flatness of the flange is really not an issue, I did not want to get all gorilla on the screws and risk cracking the glass. Because of the outward camber of the glass, I applied a little bit of contact cement to the glass and the flange gasket prior to installing the glass. I then pressed the glass to the gasket to hold it in place while I positioned the clamp ring and pushed the screws through. The gap between the clamp ring and the spigots sides is a respectable 1/8" - 3/16", which I will calk later, once I figure out what kind of caulk I'm going to use. A clear caulk would probably work, but I'm going to look in to tinting some caulk the same color as my paint. I haven't decided if I will caulk the glass to clamp ring joint yet. I feel very good that these lights will not leak and will be robust enough for off shore use. To test the quality of the seal we made, I had my son inside the boat and I used the shop air compressor to blast air at the port light from outside the boat. Using a smoking match, we could see no signs of air getting past the seal we made.

Because of how the lights are framed, I decided to paint the spigots before installing the glass. I gave each spigot a good scuffing, and repaired some dings I made from carelessly throwing debris out of the port light opening. I'm using PPG's industrial line of paints on the boat and have decided to use an acrylic urethane. The urethane is a high gloss with good toughness ratings and abrasion resistance. The thing I like about this paint is the ability to be able to get back in to the paint for repairs. I really would have preferred to have the whole hull painted, but I'm not ready for that stage yet, and won't be until late spring or early summer. Seeing the first bit of shiny paint on the boat was a big time boost to my morale, and has really got me motivated to get to the stage of being able to top coat the whole hull. Because I painted the spigots before the hull, I have a parting line to deal with around each port light. For painting,I taped the light off 1" away from the spigot. When I paint the hull, I'll wet sand the parting line I just created flush with the primer, then tape back towards the spigot 3/8" or so. I'll then have to wet sand that now new parting line flush with the top coat I just applied and buff. I'll have more parting lines to deal with due to the way I intend to paint the hull. If I can get another person to help with the spraying, I might get away with no parting lines other than the port lights.

All the port light glass is now installed, so I can now permanently install the wood interior trim rings and give them a coat of urethane. Now that the glass is installed, the difference in sound is amazing. I can no longer hear the radio that plays in the shop, and my son and I had to almost shout to communicate with him on the inside of the boat, and me on the outside. I'm happy with the way the port light project turned out, and I'm very happy to have another big job checked off of my list.

Bilge pumps

2011-12-16T07:19:00.010-05:00

To date, I have three bilge pumps on board. Basically, one bilge pump for each of my three water tight compartments. One pump in the cabin area, one pump in the engine room, and one pump in the lazarette. The pumps in the engine room and cabin area are 1 1/2" discharge, 3700 GPH Rule pumps with Water Witch sensors for the switch. The pump in the lazarette is a 1 1/8" discharge, Rule 1500 GPH. I have also made provisions in my hydraulic circuit to have on board a hydraulic pump rated @ 11,000 GPH. The hydraulic pump will be plumbed in to the engine room and forward cabin compartments, and I will direct which compartment it is to pump out via a valve and manifold. The 11,000 GPH hydraulic pump is a two inch discharge. The pumps all have an automatic float switch along with a manual switch. The pumps will have a control panel at the helm that alarms when water is high and an indicator light telling me if the pump is running. It's pretty easy and inexpensive to install an event counter on the pump, and that might be another handy device to have on board.

On past boats I've owned, bilge pump access has always been one of my pet peeves, and production builders seem not to care about ease of access. On this boat, I've tried to make all systems components within easy reach, and have avoided burying components to a point that maintenance becomes difficult. The bilge pump in the cabin area and lazarette are extremely easy to access and I'm happy with their placement. The 3600 GPH pump in the engine room is a different story, but I think I came up with a good solution to make this pump easy to service.

Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I would have moved the main engine forward in the boat by 8 or 10 inches. I placed the main engine as far forward to the center of the boat as possible, leaving the engine 8" off of the main bulkhead. That 8" separation gives me enough room to remove the belt guard bolts and be able to service/replace the serpentine belt on the front of the engine. The problem is that 8" really does not give me enough room to access the bilge pump which is under the engine, on the port side, and up against the bulkhead. The real problem is that the bilge under the engine mounts, is over 24" deep, and making pump connections will be extremely difficult at best. The other issue complicating this job is that all the hydraulic lines for the steering, bow thruster, and anchor winch penetrate the water tight bulkhead in this area, so access is not only tight, but it is crowded. The hydraulic lines received the premium real estate in the bilge and penetrate the bulkhead at a high elevation which makes them relatively easy to connect.

The solution I came up with for the engine room bilge pump was to make a bracket on a post and mount the pump to that. The pump mounting post then screws to the bulkhead wall. I installed plywood on both engine room bulkheads, and that decision is paying some dived-ens given the amount of equipment I've attached to the bulkheads without worrying about hitting a nailer. The flexible 1 1/2" bilge pump discharge line is already connected through the bulkhead before I lower the pump in to place. I make the pump to discharge connection while the pump is out of the bilge, make the wire connections, then lower the pump on it's bracket in to the bilge, and bolt the bracket to the bulkhead with four screws. Removal or installation of the pump takes less than a few minutes. The thing I like about this way of mounting the pump is that if I event suspect the pump has a chance to get oil fouled due to work being done in the engine room, I can easily lift it out of harms way, do my work, then easily and quickly replace it. I have about five or six hours in making the bracket and tweeking it, but for me, this is time well spent. I know the older I get, the more difficult it is going to be to cram myself in tight places, and being able to easily service this pump will make life on board much more user friendly. Now that I've had the pump in and out of the bilge a few times, I'm totally happy with this set up as it's a breeze to make the pump connections while the pump is sitting on the engine room door's threshold.

For the lazzarette pump and forward cabin pump, I fabricated some stainless steel brackets. The pump base bolts to the bracket and the pump snaps to the pump base. I tapped threads the metal the fabricated bracket screws to so I could use 10-24 stainless machine screws to mount the bracket. These pumps are easy to access by so no fancy post contraption needed to be fabricated.

I kind of frown on boats that have a rats nest of wire and wire nuts dangling in the bilge for the wire connections on bilge pumps. I decided that I want all my wire connections in a good junction box, so that's what I did. For me, it's all about future maintenance and not having to contort myself for basic service work.

I don't have the hydraulic crash pump installed and probably won't have it for a few years. I've made all the plumbing preparations for the pump in regard to the bulkhead penetrations, and the hydraulic circuit. This pump, more than likely, will not get installed until we get the boat in to the gulf a few years from now.

The engine room bilge pump and forward cabin pump discharges along side the water tank fill manifold on the port side of the boat. The discharge lines loop 12" above the discharge port then drop back down to the discharge port. The discharge port is 12" above the water line.

I'm using a drippless seal for my prop shaft, so I'm planning on a dry bilge in the engine room. Given the boat is steel, I feel as having dusty bilge's is a realistic goal. And while I feel as if I will probably never use my bilge pumps, I want a good installation that is easy to service and maintain so when the day comes that the pumps are needed, I can rely on my end of the work as not contributing to a failure.

Bathroom update

2011-11-24T20:54:00.006-05:00

All the foam in the bathroom has vanished behind the finish work.

I had some green bead board left over from the kids cabin and installed that for the ceiling. I think I'll tone the green down a little and paint it a more neutral color such as a tan. The access panel for the 4" exhaust fan is finished along with the port light trim ring. I also finished the trim work around the cabinet. It's so nice not to see foam anymore.

Since the ceiling and ceiling trim is installed there was no reason not to install the shower fixtures. The shower is now functional including the wiring of the shower sump. I still have to address the faulty sump switch, but someone told me Rule has an excellent replacement policy and as long as the switch is less than a couple of years old, they'll replace it with no questions asked.

I have the hatch framed in out of Cherry, so I'm ready to fabricate the hatch that accesses the shower sump and valves that direct the sump discharge. I'm going to install a new floor in the bathroom as I'm not happy with the Cherry plywood I have under the composting toilet. The fit is less than great, and it bothers me. I ran into a hard wood floor installer I know the other day and he has enough scrap of Brazilian Cherry in his shop that will do my floor. I only need about 15 square feet and the few dollars a square foot I"ll pay him is extremely fair to me.

I installed one 7 watt LED can light in the bathroom. In a perfect world, another light would be ideal, but the one light does the job and gives the room a nice glow. All the lights on the boat are controlled by wall switches, and I prefer that much more than having a switch on the light. The can light pivots, so we can direct light either in to the shower or in to the cabinet above the toilet.

I think the next move after I complete the bathroom is to do some DC electrical work on board. I want to get the battery cables installed along with the battery control panel for my three battery banks. I can now install the lower air conditioner along with the duct work and then button up the starboard chase way.

Passage door update #2

2011-11-15T07:23:00.010-05:00

All five passage doors are hung in their openings and have two coats of urethane finish on them. Another fairly large job can be, for the most part, checked off of the list.

Because of having to build the boat in two sections ( hull/ wheel house @ salon), I cannot install the ceiling in the hallway and master cabin. Because I cannot finish the ceilings, there is no point in casing the doors, so that job will wait until the boat gets to the launch site.

I purchased a mortise lock set for the master cabin bathroom door. The lock set is solid brass with a brushed nickel finish so my hope is the lock set will handle corrosion. I installed the lock set and I'm happy with how it looks and works. Installing a mortise lock set is a slow, time consuming job with very little room for error. I roughed in the mortise with a 5/8 forstner bit, then cleaned out the mortise with a chisel. I had to make a jig to hold the door plumb with my drill press, and other than cutting the mortise a 1/4" shallow, all went well. From start to finish, I had about 2 1/2 hours in installing the lock set with 1/2 of an hour consumed with building the jig for the drill press. The lock set has a dead bolt so we can lock the door from inside of our cabin. I think I'll have dead bolts on our cabin doors, and the bathroom doors, but will use lock sets without dead bolts for the other doors.

I brushed two coats of gloss urethane finish on the doors. I'm not incredibly happy with the finish and I think I'll spray the final coat of finish on the doors. No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to brush a good finish on my work. I think my problem is I'm expecting too much out of two coats of finish. Next summer, when the boat is at the launch site and we're putting the final finish coats on everything, I'm hoping I'll get some help on getting a decent top coat on all the wood. For right now, everything is getting two coats for protection, and that's the story I'm sticking with.

The next job is to get the bathroom completed. There is really not a huge amount of work left to finish that room, and I should be able to get it off of my list in a week or so. I have to install the exhaust fan, install the ceiling, fabricate the interior trim ring for the portlight, and install the portlight.

Passage door update

2011-11-06T13:36:00.012-05:00

All the passage doors are built with three of them hung in the openings.

Like I said in my last post I decided upon mortise and tenon construction for these doors. Just to give an extra added bit of strength to the joint, I through pinned each joint with two 3/8" wood dowels. The day I needed the dowels ( more of my great scheduling skills), I went over to the wood working supply store to get a few things and some Cherry dowels. The store was out of Cherry dowels, and in my haste to get a door assembled, I decided to make the dowel a design element, and went with Walnut dowels. The dowels all but guarantee the joints will never pull apart, and to be honest with you, I like the dark contrast of the walnut dowel. I think the doors will really pop once I have some finish on them. In order to prevent blowing out the back of the door while drilling the dowel, I clamped a block of wood where the drill exited the door.

The door project has put a serious hurting on my pile of air dried Cherry lumber, and I'm going to have to harvest a tree or two before too long so I can have dry lumber by next summer. I really do not have enough time to air dry by next summer, so I might be building a solar kiln late this winter to speed things up. In order to save lumber, I decided to buy a sheet of 3/4" Cherry veneer plywood, rip the jamb stock off of the ply, then miter the stock back against itself to make it look like a solid board for the jambs. This worked out well ( more of a suggestion from Captain Ted of LTS Builders), and only took me an hour to rip all the plywood, miter all the end caps and glue and nail theme together. All told I fabricated ten jambs in an hour. I used my brad nailer to pin the miter pieces while the glue set up. You will not see the nail holes as I held the nails away from the miter, and my door casing, with its 1/4" reveal, will cover the nails.

The lumber pile is for sure on the down hill side of the ride, so I had to use some pieces that had a few flaws. My biggest concern regarding lumber quality was finding straight grain, and no cracks or checks. The styles and rails are 4" wide, and while it seems it would be easy, finding ten, six foot long pieces, that I could mill into the correct width with no cracks was a challenge. So given those search parameters, I used some pieces with bad knots. A bad knot is what I call a dead branch knot, meaning a dead branch created the knot. Dead branch knots will fall out or have rot around them. I dealt with the knots by routing them out the same way a dentist would remove a cavity, I then filled the excavation with a Dutchman patch. I really like the character the Dutchman patch gives the piece, and like not having to waste wood. I built five doors and I had to make four Dutchman patches.

I'm pre-hanging the doors on my plywood jambs the same way a pre hung doors comes to any building site. I should have the doors hung and cased by the end of the week, then I'll get some finish on them.

Passage doors

2011-10-28T07:28:00.014-04:00

There are five wooden passage doors in the lower cabin area between the various rooms. The master cabin has an entrance door, the kids dressing room has an entrance door, the kids dressing room has a door leading to the bunk room, and both the master cabin and kids bunk room has a door leading to the common bathroom. I'm narrowing down the names for the boat and at the top of the list is: " I"m glad I did not bid this job since this turned out to be a ton more work that I'd figured". It might be hard to get that name to fit on the transom, but hopefully you get the jest of my lame joke and how much work went in to the passage door project. In all seriousness about a boat name, every time I think of naming her, I keep hearing Neil Young's opening guitar salvo of the song "Homegrown" so I'm keeping that name on the boat name list as she is totally homegrown/ built.

The first order of business on the passage doors was deciding on the method of construction. I could have made things easy on myself and gone with plywood slabs for doors. I really did not want the look of the plywood slab, so I quickly ruled that method out. I know I wanted a frame and panel door so I just needed to work out some construction issues. My cabinet frame and panel shaper cutter set seemed like the obvious choice to build these doors, but the more I got to thinking about it, the more I started to think that method would not be robust enough for passage doors. Ththe set of cutters I have is made for 3/4" thick stock. I was having doubts I could get 3/4" stock to stay flat on a door that was going to be over 6' tall. I was also concerned that the cope and stick pattern of the cutter would not give enough glue area on the joints to be able to handle a the violent slamming these large doors might see once we are at sea. Also, the shaper cutter set is tooled to form a 1/4" groove, so 1/4" plywood or raised panels would have to be used for the door panel. I did not want to use raised panels due to the environment of below deck relating to wood movement and also the amount of wood I'd have to use, so I had to consider 1/4" plywood. The problem with 1/4" plywood is that it is only good on one side so I'd end up with a door with one good veneer side, and a not so good side. If I were going to use the cabinet door shaper cutter set, I would also have to consider reinforcing the joint with dowels to give the door a fighting chance of surviving life at sea.

I have been bouncing ideas of door construction off of a builder/cabinet maker I work for, Ted Lenord of LTS builders, and he kind of went along with my fantasy of getting these doors built fast and cheap, but I think he tired of me dragging this out and one day told me "listen up MO FO, you're either going to do this job half assed or your going to do it the right way and build a mortise and tenon door." Ted was right so I decided upon the mortise and tenon method.

I started picking through my stack of air dried Cherry, and soon realized I did not have enough stock to make all the styles and rails I needed since I wanted the style and rail thickness to be 1 1/4". I for sure did not want to pay retail for this amount of lumber so I decided to laminate material together to get my 1 1/4" thick stock. I had a four inch H beam in the shop so I used that as my surface to clamp the ply's to for my laminating process. I decided to use two ply's for the lamination. The laminating process was pretty straight forward as I would pick my stock, straight edge it and rip, plane to thickness, then rip a thinner piece to make the final laminate. I would then pick the best sides, make sure the grain went opposing directions, spread glue with a paint roller then clamp both ply's to the H beam. I only had enough clamps to do one piece at a time, so getting all e stock laminated took me almost 10 days. W hen I removed the stock from the form, I jointed one edged straight, then ripped to the final width and jointed the ripped edge. I waited to plane to final thickness once I was getting closer to assembling. Laminating in this method made for a board that was straight as string across all faces and also incredibly stiff. I'm hoping that this will also make for a more stable door that will handle the moister levels an ocean going, tropical traveling boat will experience.

Once all the stock was jointed and planed to final thickness I could then plow the groove for the panel. I decided to use 1/2" Cherry plywood for the panel. I plowed the groove in the center of the style's and rail's, stopping short on the the end of the style so the groove would be hidden. I used a stacked Dado cutter on my table saw to plow the panel groove.

The next step was to decide how I was going to cut the mortise's . On projects past, I've cut mortises with a drill press, then used a chisel to clean out the mortise. I've also used my router mounted in a home made router table using an up cut spiral bit. For this job I decided to use my mill and a 1/2" up cut spiral bit. The mill was a nice tool to use for this for a couple of reasons. Reason number one is it's quiet compared to a router. The best reason I like about using the mill is the precision I get with it. I have way too much time and resource involved in laminating my stock, and I really don't want to be making a mistake due to lack of precision or careless measuring. The depth of all the mortises was 1 1/4", and I was able to do that in two passes by maintaining a slow, constant feed using the mill's hand crank table. It also helped that the tool was new and razor sharp, and that I was able to keep the mortise cleaned out while cutting it by using my shop air compressor.

To cut the tenons I again used the stacked dado cutter in the table saw. With the amount of time I had in laminating my stock, I was super cautious about cutting the tenons. I measured the thickness of the stock using a caliper, subtracted the tenon thickness, then divided by two to get the height of the shoulder cut. I then dialed in the height of the dado cutter and ran a test piece so I could accurately measure the cut with the caliper. Once I was sure of the depth of cut, I used a dial indicator to lower the cut a few thousandths to make sure my tenons finished out at least ten thousandths over 1/2" or .510. My goal with the tenon was to make sure I had a snug fit that would require a little work with a rasp and block plane to get a perfect fit in the mortise.

Having each mortise fit to it's particular tenon, I dry fitted all of the doors. This last picture only shows four doors. The door not show is my prototype door, and is already installed on the boat. I"ll post again shortly after I have the doors glued and when I'm ready to start hanging the doors on the jambs. I"m going to pre-hang the doors on their jambs to make installation easier. I've yet to decide upon hardware but I'll discuss that more in my next post.

Shower

2011-10-08T06:06:00.002-04:00

We have two showers on board, the lower shower in the cabin areas, and another shower on the aft deck. We decided to use tile for the lower shower and I finished that job this week.

There are three ladies in our family and all of them were firm in that they wanted a shelf to rest their feet for shaving their legs. The shelf will probably serve double duty as a place to rest shower things as we did not install any ceramic things like a towel bar or soap dish.

The shower is kind of an odd shape, but rather roomy once your inside. Our last boat had a totally inadequate shower, and while we used it, it was one kind of a pain in the ass to use.

There is a sump under the bathroom floor to pump the shower water either overboard or to a holding tank under the kids starboard berth. I tested the pump when I first installed it, and was disappointed that the rule mechanical float switch was not reliable. I have the pump switched for manual or automatic but I think I might install one of the sensor type float switch's and do away with the old style mechanical switch.

Now that the tile work is finished, I think I'll stick with the bathroom work and finish the room. The ceiling can now be installed along with the four inch ventilation fan and the fan's access panel. I still have to build the trim ring for the port light and I'm thinking I might also install the light. I've finished laminating all the rails and styles for the five passage doors I need to build, so I can also get the bathroom doors installed. We are planning on a shower door, but I'm in no hurry for that to be installed.

I spoke with a few steel trawler owners regarding tile in the showers and they have not had any problems with it. I framed the shower stall in a way that minimized it's connection to the hull so I'm hoping that the tile does not crack. If this decision turns out to be a bad one, I'll make sure to tear in to the tile guy and make him fix it with another system. I guess one of the good things about doing your own work is you know who to be pissed at when things don't go so well. Once I get some off shore hours on the boat, I'll let all know how the tile holds up.

For some reason, these pictures are not so great. I should have re positioned the light I have in the shower room to let the flash do it's thing. These pictures make the tile look more yellow than it is in case your wondering. I could be seeing the demise of the cheap boat camera.... I'll keep you posted.

2011-10-08T06:05:00.000-04:00

2011-10-08T06:03:00.000-04:00

Companion way

2011-09-25T09:49:00.013-04:00

I still had one more major wood working job left on the lower hull that I've been blowing off for a few months now, and that was finishing the companion way from the salon to the cabins below. In order to get the 12,000 BTU air conditioner installed along with the associated wiring, I had to get the companion way ( stair way) completed.

This is another busy area of the boat. The DC electric passes from the engine room to the helm via conduit and a junction box in the companion way. This includes the 2/0 cables from the battery bank, the main engine and generator wiring harness's, the bilge pump's controls, high water alarms controls and whatever other DC wires I can conjure up. I installed six one inch conduits, two 3/4" conduits, and some 1/2" conduits from this junction box to the helm in this tight space.

The 12,000 BTU air conditioner will also reside in the companion way underneath the stairs. This 12000 BTU air conditioner is keel cooled and will be for the sleeping cabins only. Another marine air conditioner is in the lazarette, and will service the wheel house and salon. The stairs you see in these pictures are plywood stairs that I'm using for construction. The final stairs will be made from Cherry, and will be closed stringers and risers ( with ventilation). The important part of the stairs you see in these pictures, and along with the final stairs, is that the stairs are hinged for quickly gaining access underneath the stair case. The hinging of the stairs is another one of the things I got right on the build and have proven to be fantastic in regard to getting things done quickly in this area. Along with the air conditioner, the ducts for the forward cabins will rise from the air conditioner via the companion way cabinet on its way to the utility chase that is framed between the ceiling the the hull liner.

The vent and fill manifold for the starboard water tanks are also accessed from behind the companion way cabinets via access panels.

The overboard clothes washing machine discharge piping along with the half bath sink above, and the sump discharge for the air conditioner leave the boat from this area. Just to make things complete, I installed two spare one inch above the water discharge points, and one more 1 1/2" above the water discharge point in this area. All of this is accessed from either underneath the stairs, or from inside the companion way cabinet.

Once you come down the companion way stairs, you land in the area where you either continue straight to the kids cabin's dressing room, or you turn left to enter the master cabin. Since the outboard area of this landing was not much use, I decided to add shelves go get more storage. The shelves are fixed and have fiddles fixed to them. I have a vision of these shelves being used for can goods, but time will tell just how they evolve. I know they will need another bar going across the opening to hold things in place, but I'll wait on building that until I see what everyone wants to use them for.

The cabinet on the outboard side of the companion way came about as a way to hide the junction box and air conditioning duct work. I created two shelves in this cabinet plus sunk the bottom of the cabinet to allow storage of large bulky items. This will be a large item cabinet. Because of the hinge stairs, and wanting to keep the stair case width, I built these doors as a flush style vs the overlay style I've built on the rest of the boat. The flush style is more challenging to build as the door must be fit in to the opening and all the reveals need to be consistent for the door to look good. Since the humidity has been high here lately, I gave these doors a 1/6" reveal. The doors are frame and panel construction using Cherry wood. When all is said and done, and the final stairs are installed, I want no more than a 3/8" gap between the hinged stairs and the companion way cabinet and opposing wall. This is why I went with the flush door method, and is also why I'll have to use drilled finger pulls ( holes ) to open the cabinet doors. I want this area to be easy to navigate down with no snags or things to bump against. I paid particular attention, using a plumb bob and good layout, to make sure these cabinets were square and plumb with the bulkhead that the steps will be hinged to. It is important to me that the steps swing up smoothly and do not rub the cabinets and wall given the tight gaps I want to hold on the casework.

I have two coats of satin urethane on everything so things should be protected for the rest of the build. I can now install the keel cooled air conditioner and check another item off of the list. This was a fairly large wood working job, and I have over a week in getting it completed. The last wood working projects for the lower hull are building of the passage doors and building the finish stairs for the companion way.

Fresh water system

2011-09-09T06:39:00.012-04:00

The fresh water system is complete and ready to use. Once I finish the shower tile and connect the drains to the two sinks I have installed, I think I'll add a few gallons of water to tank #1 and test the system.

I have eight stainless water tanks under the forward sole of the boat. The tanks primarily reside in the master cabin and kids dressing room between station #9 and #5. Total capacity of the tanks are about 370 gallons. There are no tanks under the bathroom or kids cabin.

My plan for having 8 water tanks was for obvious reasons to fit them under the sole between frames and get as much fresh water on board as I could. To prevent one tank failure from taking the water system off line, I provided a shut off valve for each tank. The tanks are connected in series, so this required a valve at the tank along with "T" connections. Because I wanted to have the ability to take any one tank off line, I manifolded the vent lines and fill lines together on both the port and starboard side. I have a one fill and vent manifold on both the port and starboard side of the boat. I can close any one vent or fill line via a valve at the respective manifold to totally isolate any one tank. The vent lines are 3/4" from the tank and connect together via a 1" manifold that leads above deck. The fill lines are 1 1/2" that lead to an 1 1/2" manifold that reduce down to 1 1/4" leading towards each tank. I used flexible sch. 40 PVC for the most of the fill lines and 3/4" rubber push lock hose for the vents. All the manifolds and fittings are rigid, sch. 40 PVC with pressure fittings. The picture showing the fill manifold also shows my engine room bilge pump and forward cabin bilge pump discharge lines. The bilge pump are 1 1/2" discharge. The overboard discharge for galley sink is just forward of the bilge pump discharge's. In this picture, the galley sink discharge is not connected yet, but you can see the fitting, painted white, welded in to the hull. This is a busy area of the boat with a lot of piping between station #9 @ # 8.

The series connections for the tanks happen in the bilge area at the center longitudinal frame of the boat. The common line manifolds together forward of station #9, which is the water tight bulkhead separating the engine room from the master cabin. The now manifolded lines pass through the water tight bulkhead via a water tight seal and the now one line enters the engine room where the pressure pump resides. In order to keep an eye on the water level in the tanks, I made a simple sight gauge out of clear SCH. 40 PVC. By closing the valve leading to the pump and opening the valve leading to the sight gauge, I can see the liquid level in the tanks. I have a threaded cap on top of the site gauge I'll have to loosen to let air out of the gauge to get an accurate reading. The gauge is easily accessible by removing a sole panel. The gauge is threaded into a "ELL" fitting and is easily removed for cleaning or replacing.

The pressurized supply line travels under the engine room sole where it passes through another water tight bulkhead via another water tight seal and ends up in the lazarette where the water is distributed to the rest of the boat via a PEX distribution manifold.

I used a home style water heater that hangs from a bracket on the wall. The water heater uses a 1500 watt element, so it will pull 12.5 amps @ 120 volt. I'm going to leave this device off of the inverter circuit, and commit to using the generator when I need to make hot water. The tank is 8 gallons, so we will be able to store enough hot water for hand washing and dish washing. When we want hot showers, we'll have to fire up the generator. I do not trust the wall hanging bracket to hold the water heater fast in many boating situations, so I'm going to strap it to the wall with some sort of straps.

I located the pressure pump in the engine room under the work bench and below the steering hydraulic reservoir. This location is still easy to get to regarding maintenance, but it was not my first choice. I can easily sit on the engine room floor and do any service work or repair to the pump without having to get in any contorted position. All through the build, I've been trying to build with maintenance and repair in mind, and I don't want to design or build any system that requires a contortionist to work on things. I decided to use a moderate priced pump system that was sold as a unit. The unit is four GPM with the cut off switch set for 45 psi and the cut in set at 30 psi. There is an inline strainer before the pump and a small accumulator tank after the pump. I would have liked to have a little larger accumulator tank, but we'll just have to see how this unit performs. The accumulator tank is a tank with a bladder in it that stores water pressure so the pump does not have to run every time the cold water is turned on.

I used 3/4" potable water grade suction hose with stainless wire in it for the suction side of the pump, and 1/2" PEX for all the pressure side. The suction hose is fitted with barb fittings and hose clamps. I'd prefer to have compression fittings, but hose clamps seem to work better in the bilge space and they are less expensive. Because of the mounting issue of the hot water heater, I added bronze unions to make the water heater removal a quick and easy job. I also added quick release fittings at the pressure pump to make pump removal easy.

Power steering complete

2011-09-05T14:42:00.004-04:00

The power steering system is complete and ready for oil and testing.

I finally received the auxiliary drive adapter from Deere and had little problems getting it installed. The adapter is a nice piece of equipment and the machining is top notch as everything fit together nicely. I really like this set up vs a belt driven contraption off of the front of the engine. The drive adapter is actually set up to use two pumps. I have the hydraulic power steering pump mounted on the SAE "B" side of the adapter, and if you look at the picture I have room for another pump inboard of the steering pump. I don't know how I will configure the auto pilot and if I need another pump to drive it. This drive adapter is commonly used to drive the power steering pump and also the sea water pump if that is how one is cooling the engine. Since I'm keel cooled, I don't need the sea water side of the drive adapter.

The drive adapter taps in to the engines oil circuit and has a steel line leading from the engine to the top of the drive adapter. The oil enters the drive adapter at this point, lubricates the gears then is collected in the sump and is returned to the oil pan via another steel line. It took a little head scratching to realize how the lines were connected, but once I realized the logic, the perfectly bent lines fit just how the Deere engineers had planned. I love it when things actually work and work well.

I'm going to get the exhaust connected along with the hydraulic system before I fire the engine. Jim at Key Power is drawing my hydraulic circuit so I can start putting the pieces together. I do know I need 3/4" hydraulic lines feeding my bow thruster and deck winch, so I'm going to measure for those, figure the route and get all my bulkhead fittings installed. I'll be able to bush the bow thruster lines down to 1/2" once I get close to the tube. The 3/4" line is needed to overcome friction loss due to the long runs. Once I have the hydraulic system and exhaust system complete, I'll fire the engine and test the systems. If I have the engine running by Halloween, I'll be happy.

As I work towards the end goal of having the engine running and all of it's associated systems, I find myself completing other jobs along the way. I need to install the engine room bilge pump and the bilge pump in the forward rooms while I'm installing the hydraulic lines so I have no conflicts of various lines. I also need to get the water system installed to make sure all the various hard lines work together. Two months to complete these jobs seems reasonable, and to be honest with you, once the engine fires, I think I'll be on the down hill side of having all the major systems complete. AC and DC systems is on the schedule for fall if your reading this Kevin M.

Power steering part II

2011-08-28T14:26:00.014-04:00

I'm still waiting for the auxiliary drive adapter from John Deere. On Thursday, the Deere marine dealer called me to let me know the part had shipped, so I should see it on Monday as it was shipping from Ashland KY. I'm not in a big hurry for this part, but if I were depending on this type of service or made my living off of getting repair parts in a a relatively short time, I'd be quite pissed at Deere about now. I've owned CAT equipment all my career, and to be honest, no one can hold a candle to how fast CAT gets parts to contractors. I'm not going to beat this horse any more, but I've never waited more than 24 hours for a CAT part.... NEVER.

All the hydraulic lines I'm able to install without having the drive adapter are installed. The lines had to pass through two water tight bulkheads en route from the engine room to the helm then to the steering quadrant. I used bulkhead fittings to get through the bulkheads and maintain the water tight integrity of the bulkhead. The bulkhead fitting also breaks the lines down in to shorter runs, which helps the manageability of the system.

A few things are starting to look like I did some things right in the previous stage of the build. It has turned out to be a good thing that I bolted lumber to my steel framing to screw the various floors too. I've had all the engine room floor plates many, many times, and having the lumber to screw the floor panels too, vs screwing to the floor material directly to the steel framing, has made removal and replacement of the panels a breeze. I held the lumber proud of the steel framing by 1/16th of an inch, so I don't have any aluminum touching any steel which should help with rattles. The lumber is also making running mechanical systems much simpler and quicker as it is much easier to run a screw in to the lumber for attaching clamps vs through bolting through the steel. The lumber to steel idea has for sure made my life easier. I still have water lines, electric lines, and more hydraulic lines to install beneath the sole, and I know it is going to speed things up and make a hard job easier due to having the timber frames bolted to the steel frames.

Because my lines are fixed between bulkheads, and no line will see any movement, I have a feeling the hydraulic lines will last many, many years. The only place I will have movement of any parts is at the steering quadrant. Because of the slight movement the steering quadrant will have upon the hydraulic lines, I decided to use a short jumper line between the cylinders and a bulkhead fitting vs having a long line directly from the water tight bulkhead to the cylinders. I attached a two inch piece of angle iron the the aft wall, and used two bulkhead fittings to make the connections. Since I have some hydraulic hose left over, I'll probably make a spare line for this area and in case the movement in the quadrant causes a line to fail prematurely. So I have a relatively set of long lines starting at the water tight bulkhead terminating at the angle iron bulkhead fitting, then two short jumper lines connect to the slightly moving quadrant.

I installed the seven gallon reservoir underneath the work bench next to the engine. I threaded a filter in to the reservoir, and have the return circuit running through the filter. The reservoir has a site gauge on it with a built in thermometer. To make filling the reservoir easier, I extended a 1" fill neck with a vented cap up to the work bench elevation. The " low " level on the site gauge is 4" above the pump elevation. The pump needs to be gravity fed and it was critical to keep the oil level above the pump at all times.

I kicked around the various routes I had to get the hydraulic lines from the engine room to the helm and back again for while before I committed to install the lines. I decided to run the lines from under the engine bed, through the water tight bulkhead @ the center of the boat, then up the wall of the master cabin and in to a chase in the master cabin ceiling. I'm going to have to create a chase to hide the hydraulic lines that run up the master cabin wall by the water tight door, but this will solve a few problems in doing so. I've decide to use this newly created chase to run the throttle control and shift cable controls for the main engine. I also will use this chase to run the hydraulic lines for the deck winch. The ceiling chase is getting crowded, but I know I have enough room to install the shift and throttle cables. I am questioning if the winch hydraulic lines will fit in the remaining space since those are 1/2", and things are getting tight up there. I do have another framed ceiling chase next to this one on the other side of the longitude ceiling beam, so I can always use that chase. The unused chase I'm speaking of is going to be for my DC home runs from the engine room, and the AC lines feeding the air conditioner that will reside under the steps.

I'm clamping all the hydraulic lines using galvanized rubber coated clamps and stainless screws. Any place I have four lines running together, I clamped two of them with the steel clamps, then used plastic cable ties to tie the remaining two lines to the better clamped set. Any place I have two lines, I steel clamped one line, then cable tied the other to it. I had ordered two boxes of clamps from the Parts Connection, and the other day, I gave one of them back. This week on one of my visits to the Parts Connection, I'm going to get back that box as I've been burning through the clamps. I don't want any moving or chaffing of these hydraulic lines. Any place I installed lines through metal framing ( when not using bulkhead fittings) I hole sawed through the metal and installed a rubber grommet. 1 1/4" grommets were a little tight for two 3/8" lines together, so I upped the grommet size to 1 1/2"

The size of the steering wheel is something that has been eluding me, and I really don't know how big a wheel I want. I mocked up a few sizes, but am afraid to commit to anything. I found a used 18" destroyer wheel on Ebay, and paid the stupidly cheap price of $1.00 plus $12.00 in shipping. The wheel is missing the cap, but I could lathe one out of Cherry, and call this a done deal. At least I can use the wheel to test the steering as soon as I finish the job and get the engine ready to fire. Hard over to hard over on this steering system will be about three turns, so a large wheel is not needed for torque. 18" might work, but seems a little small to me.

The helm is mounted to a piece of 18" channel welded and braced to the floor. All the helm cabinetry will be in Cherry, so you won't see that beautiful piece of channel steel. The channel makes for a nice stout mounting tower for the helm and hydraulic lines, and that's all I cared about.

I don't think installing the pump drive adapter is going to be a big job, so I am looking to have the steering system wrapped up by next weekend. I'll post some more once I have the drive adapter installed. I might connect the exhaust at that time and fire the engine.

Power Steering

2011-08-21T11:51:00.005-04:00

I'm working on the power steering but really don't have much to post in terms of pictures. Most of the work right now revolves around routing the hydraulic lines, drilling holes, and mounting all of the bulkhead fittings. All the lines have been routed and are in the back of my truck ready for a trip to the hydraulic shop where Chuck will smash the ends on.

My hydraulic steering system is basically a power steering system. I have a pump that is driven off of a gear that runs off of the timing gear on the engine. I have a six gallon reservoir for the hydraulic fluid and a filter in the return line. The engine mounted pump drives my helm pump which is what the steering wheel bolts too via a 3/4" tapered, keyed shaft. The helm pump then sends fluid to a dual ram steering quadrant that turns the rudder. This is a pretty simple system that is what I would call robust, and should give me decades of trouble free service.

I'm still waiting on the pump drive adapter from Deere, but that should be in this week and I'll then be able to finalize the installation and start posting some pictures.

Here's another diagram showing how the auto pilot solenoid valve will plumb in to the circuit.

Water tight doors

2011-08-06T17:20:00.009-04:00

While waiting for parts for the steering system I decided to install the water tight doors in the engine room. As my son would say, " everything tight doors" is really a better description.

The doors have been laying around the shop ever since I bought them at the start of the build. I welded the frames in to the bulkheads, then forgot about the doors. The door leading into the engine room from our cabin is a six dog quick acting door with a port light. Since I don't need the aluminum dead light that came with the door, I took it off. The port light glass in this door is 1/2" thick tempered, and the door itself is 1/4" thick. This door is what I would call severe duty, and is both water tight and fire tight. When this door shuts, things are pretty much final, and no air or water is getting past it.

The door leading from the engine room to the lazarette is a four dog door that is not quick acting. It too, has a port light and is also 1/4" thick. Since this door has no adjustments, the new gasket and dogs are still tight, and I have to use a rubber dead blow mallet to close the dogs. I don't have to hit the dogs to hard, but the mallet works better than my hand. I'll end up buying a dedicated mallet, and hang it on a hook next to the door.

Both doors have a bronze port light in them, and we decide to polish the port light. I had some stainless steel pickling paste in the shop, and brushing some of that on the bronze took the tarnish right off. It was almost too easy and looked like one of those Billy Mays commercials except for the fact that pickling paste is nasty stuff and will give one a good burning if you're not careful. After the acid treatment, I gave them a good scrubbing in cold water, the put a paste wax finish on them to try to keep the tarnish at bay. We'll see how this works out.

Both the AC and DC light switch for the engine room is in our cabin so I can see in to the engine room through the port light without opening the door. I felt like this was important in case something was going on in that room I wanted to see and still maintain the integrity of water and fire tight. It also makes it easy to do a quick check without letting the noise and heat in to the cabin. The light switch for the lazarette is outside the lazarette, in the engine room, for the same purpose of being able to look in without opening the door.

I think I'm going to fit some mineral wool insulation in the quick acting door from our cabin. The engine room is heavily insulated, and the door is really the weak link in the insulating chain. I'd guess an inch of insulation will knock the noise that will be hitting the door down by 80%.

An update on the fuel system is also needed. I had to re think the priming pump as the chevy pump I had on my shelf was not up to the lift out of the day tank. I found a new Walbro pump on Ebay for not much money, and got it installed. Walbro is a top of the line pump and with just three moving parts, this pump should last the life of the boat. I'll only use this pump to prime either the generator or main engine after I service the filters or for an emergency such as an engine loosing prime, or one of the engines loosing it's factory mounted lift pump. This pump is rated at continuous duty, so if one of the factory mounted lift pumps fail, I can always rely upon he Walbro as a good back up. Once I got the pump installed and fired up, it quickly picked up the fuel and filled my filter. I opened the valve leading to the generator, and got fuel flowing to the fuel pump. Just for kicks, I cracked one of the injectors, and had fuel spitting out of the injector. That engine is primed and ready to fire. I might use some street 90's for connecting the pump to the valves, and do away with the loops you see and make things more streamlined.

I'm still putting pieces together for the steering system, and should be working on that within a week or so.

Generator install is complete

2011-08-01T18:10:00.004-04:00

I finished making the wet exhaust connections to the generator, so for all practical purposes the generator a about as complete as I can get it right now. I'm waiting on a clamp order to get here before I can double clamp all the connections.

For the wet exhaust hose I used Gates hose with wire in it. I wanted to keep the exhaust hose pretty tight to the bulkheads so I used some fiberglass fittings to turn a 45 in to the water lift, and two 90's to get to the bulkhead. To make the turn in to and out of the bulkhead I used stainless steel 90's and sch. 80 nipples. I clamped the hose to the plywood fuel tank covers using two mineral ac clamps and I have a sch. 80 nipple welded in to the hull for the discharge about 12" above the water line.

The suction line from the sea chest to the generator pump inlet is 3/4" suction hose with stainless wire in it. I had bought a 100' roll of this stuff for the fresh water system, and had plenty of it left over so I used it for the generator. The generator is set up for 1/2" suction hose, so I had to remove the 1/2" barb fitting from the pump and increase it to 3/4" with an adapter coupler. I don't think the generator will mind the increase ( decrease in head) suction pipe size.

I've yet to install the DC conduit from the engine room to the wheel house, so I have no control wires from the generator to the wheel house. Along with the generator control panel in the wheel house, I'd like to be able to start it from the engine room, so I will need to source another panel.

I had the generator running about a year ago, but I think I'll fire it up inside the engine room within a few weeks as I'm curious to see how loud it is in place. A 55 gallon drum on my scaffold will mimic the water line, and a sump pump in a bucket below the discharge will get the water back up to the barrel. This is how I was planning on getting big electricity at the launch site, so I might as well see if it will work.

Lazarette

2011-07-28T20:35:00.008-04:00

Before I can move forward on the steering system, I needed to finish sheathing the lazarette. The lazarette is the area aft of the engine room and underneath the cockpit. The rudder post and steering gear is located in this room. The room is pretty large measuring about 14' x 7' x 48" high.

While the lazarette is home to the rudder and steering gear, I also have put some more equipment in here. The marine air conditioner that will cool the salon and wheel house will be in the lazarette along with the water heater, freezer, air compressor, 90 gallon black water tank, and generator discharge line ( wet exhaust), and fresh water hot and cold manifold.

When I was welding the boat I framed a level pad for the black water holding tank. Other than that one level area, the lazarette floor follows the shape of the hull.

I sheathed the lazarette with 1/2" B/C plywood then painted on a coat of primer( actually, I had my 16 year old son Conall Jr. paint the room), and three coats of white enamel house paint. Since I was working in that are, I decided to install the light wiring and the conduit and boxes for the various electric equipment. I had already run the wires to the big junction box next to the generator in the engine room so it was no big deal to continue the conduit run in to the lazarette. I decided to install a light switch outside of the lazarette on the engine room AC light circuit ( this will be on an inverter circuit). There will also be two DC lights in that room on a switch.

The lazarette room turned into a little bit of work and I found myself saying " since I'm in here I might as well...". Since I had finished the electric conduit and box's I decided to finish the generator discharge line. I also completed the water line manifold and made all those connections.

The water line manifold turned out to be a nice way to complete all the water lines for the boat. Instead of using "T's " hidden behind walls, I ran lines for every fixture back to the lazarette. I used a PEX manifold that comes with a nice re usable compression connector that has a shut off valve for each line. I still have to install the lines for the clothes washing machine, the salon 1/2 bath, and the aft deck outdoor shower, but I will have to wait to do that when the boat gets to the launch site. The nice thing about this manifold is that it is easy to expand and will be a breeze to winterize all the fresh water piping from this manifold by some simple valve turning and my air compressor. This was the smallest manifold my plumbing supply house sold with 9 hots and 12 cold ports. The 1" cold inlet goes all the way through so I can feed it from either the top or bottom.

The lazarette is going to be the closet of the boat and I have a feeling it will be jammed with all kinds of stuff. Once I have all the components installed I'll probably fill all the wall space with shelving. I'll wait to install the 3/8 plywood ceiling once the boat gets to the launch site. I'm only a few steps away from having the fresh water system complete, and I might head in that direction before I work on the steering and hydraulic system.

Fuel system is complete

2011-07-22T21:46:00.009-04:00

The fuel delivery end of the job is complete with the main engine and generator connected to the day tank. It was kind of anti climatic as I screwed down the last hose clamp, and realized I have no more work to do on the fuel system.

I installed check valves after the manifold. I was worried that one engine might try to pull fuel out of the other engine. I spoke with a few diesel mechanics, and all agreed that check valves would not hurt and were probably needed.

The line supplying the main engine after the manifold is 3/8" coast guard rated rubber fuel line. The return line from the main engine is the same rubber line only in 1/4". I had JIC fittings crimped on the fuel supply line for the main engine and used push on connectors for the returns.

I routed the supply and return for the main engine through the engine bed. I used a hole saw to create the bores, and then used 1 1/2" rubber grommets to pretty up the bore and prevent any chaffing of the lines. I used the same detail on the generator supply and return

The line feeding the generator is 5/16 coast guard rubber fuel line,and the return line is the same 1/4". I had to bush the return line up from 3/16 @ the generator return port. The fuel supply line on the generator is a push on connector as the generator manufacturer uses the Banjo style fitting at the fuel inlet.

The 1/2" electric priming pump looks as if it is not going to work. I got the pump to prime with a 5' piece of brake line and a bucket of fuel. However, in the real world, the pump will not pick up the fuel once I have it installed and it has to lift through the fuel filter, pipe network, valves and four feet of lift. I have to re visit the electric priming pump and get a model pump that can handle the lift and friction loss I'm placing upon it.

All the return fuel lines enter the tank at return manifold.

While both engines could be fired now, I'm really not ready as I want to get the exhaust systems completed for both engines. I'm working on the generator wet exhaust first, then I'll attack the dry exhaust for the main engine. Since I'm going to be doing the generator wet exhaust, I need to finalize the wiring in the lazzerette and finish sheathing that room. Once the lazzerete is sheathed, I can make the wet exhaust connections and check another item off the list. I'm at the point now that I want to be able to scratch these jobs off of the list and not have to re visit them. This order of work is logical as I won't be able to start the steering system until the lazzerete is completed, and the bulky wet exhaust gear is installed.

Since I am now working on the wet exhaust system for the generator, I might as well install the sea chest as the generator will be needing it's cooling water. I even hung a spare gasket for the flange connector, and the wrench for the strainer housing. Once the wet exhaust is completed, I can fire the generator. The numbers you see in the last picture is how I labeled the fuel tanks. #2 is the 200 gallon day tank, and #1 is one of the 500 gallon storage tanks.

Generator

2011-07-17T11:23:00.006-04:00

I'm waiting on the fuel line I ordered to finish the fuel delivery system, but in order to connect the fuel lines when they arrive, I had to mount the generator.

The generator is powered by a 3 cylinder Isuzu engine, wet exhaust, and is rated at 10,000 watts @ 240 volts. I've been rolling it around on 3/4" pvc pipes for the last year now, and to be honest with you, I'm glad I'm finally getting it mounted.

Before I could mount the generator, it was going to be easier to finish installing the conduit from the wheel house to the engine room. The 1.25" conduit terminates in a pvc junction box along side the generator. Since I am going to finish the conduit run, I might as well install the wiring since all this gets a little more difficult once the generator is mounted.

I dropped the water lift muffler in its location to see how things lined up. I'll have to rotate the exhaust elbow on the generator a few degrees, and use a 45 to get the line from the generator to the water lift.

The conduit from the wheel house passes through a junction box in the master cabin. All the AC wire from the cabins make their way to the wheel house through this junction box, just as all the AC wires in the engine room pass through a junction box in the engine room. I already have the lower hull lighting circuit in the conduit but I wanted to pull as much through the duct as I could think of on this pull. I pulled the four #6 wires for the generator, I pulled the #10 wires for my inverter, I pulled the #6 ground wire for the AC system ( this will bond to the hull at the engine bed along with the DC ground), I pulled the lower hull receptacle circuit (#12), and enough 12 wire for my battery charger circuit, water heater circuit, and the air conditioner circuit ( two ac units on board with one residing in the lazzerette). There is a fair amount of wire in that 1.25" conduit, but there is room for more so I left a pull string in the duct for any future wire installs I might want to make. Because the duct is filling up, leaving a pull string in the duct is easier than trying to suck one through with the shop vac or using the fish tape.

When it comes time to connect the generator to the hard wires in the junction box, I'll have a four wire rubber cord made up using stress relief cord grips and clamp it to the drip pan. A six foot cord should be plenty to get to from the generator to the junction box.

Now that I have most of my AC wires in the engine room, I can finish wire all the receptacles and AC lights in the cabins and engine room and start getting away from extension cords.

The generator has a stainless steel pan it is mounted to via some nice isolation mounts. I had been planning on mounting the generator and stainless pan directly to the aluminum diamond plate sole I installed in the engine room. I decided to replace the aluminum diamond plate under the generator with some 3/4" painted plywood. I also added some rubber pads to place between the stainless steel pan and the plywood. The metal on metal of the stainless pan and the aluminum sole was causing me some worry in regard to vibration, and also the potential for more than one path to ground should a failure of the generator circuit might occur. I do think the plywood will add a little more of a buffer vs the aluminum diamond plate.

The fuel line will be in the shop on Monday, and I'll be able to drop off the lines and have Chuck at the Parts Connection crimp on my JIC fittings. All the hard piping is completed and now that the generator is mounted, I'll finish the fuel delivery system this week.

Window package

2011-07-13T21:34:00.009-04:00

The window package showed up a few weeks ago and today I finally got around to picking it up from JCM Equipment. JCM Equip. is a the mechanic shop that works on my equipment and from time to time, they will off load a big delivery for me and store it. A testament to how busy I've been with work is that I had to wait three weeks to find the time to pick up the window package.

I had the windows built by Motion Windows ( www.motionwindows.com ). I first did business with Jeff Kemp from Motion Windows about ten years ago when I restored a Carver cruising boat. Those windows gave me zero problems over the ten years I owned them. The main reason the Carver boat sold as quickly as it did in this depressed market was because of the windows.

I didn't unpack the whole window package but I did pull a few out to inspect. I'm very happy with what I saw in my window package. I went with radius corners for the windows. There is no sign of the tooling required to shape the metal of the window frames. All the bends are perfectly executed with zero sign of a kink or faulty bend. The gaskets are as tight as a bull's ass and are flawless with no marring. All the reveals on the window are perfect. The powder coating is flawless. I'm totally pleased.

The sliding tinted window you see in this picture is one of eight that will reside in the salon.

I went with clear windows for the four windows on the front of the wheel house. The two windows in the center front of the wheel house are fixed. The two other windows on either side of the fixed wheelhouse windows are hinged up and this is one of them.

The small tinted fixed window if for the port and starboard side of the wheel house @ the back of the wheel house.

There are nine windows in the wheel house and eight windows in the salon.

I re packed the windows in the crate they arrived in, screwed the lid back down and moved them to the back of the shop. I won't be ready to install the windows until next Spring. I'll blog more about the window package once they are installed and we can see them in more detail

Fuel delivery system

2011-07-09T12:12:00.006-04:00

The fuel delivery system is how I'm going to supply my main engine, generator and any other diesel fired device that might end up on the boat. This system is separate from the transfer system and is fed from one 200 gallon tank.

The delivery system is fairly simple although having quite a few valves. Basically, I'm pulling fuel out of the 200 gallon day tank, through another Racor filter followed by a five port distribution manifold that directs fuel to either the main engine, generator or another device.

In case I have a problem with the Racor filter while under way, I installed a couple of " T's " in line along with three valves, so I could quickly by pass the Racor filter without shutting down the main engine. I could then change the filter or do whatever was needed while leaving the main engine running. Once the problem with the filter was resolved, I then would bring the Racor back on line by moving the valves back into the filter mode.

Between the Racor and the distribution manifold, I added two more " T's ", and three more valves so I could add a 12 volt pump to prime the main engine or generator. Both the main engine and generator have a manual primer pumps on them, but I wanted an in line electric pump to make priming the engines a quick process. If for some reason any engine looses its prime, all I have to do is close one valve, open two valves, turn on the electric pump, and crack the fuel intake line on the injection pump. I'm just guessing now, but I'd say I could prime either engine and have them back running in less than a minute with this set up. For me, this is an inexpensive set up that is easy to do while I'm running pipe that could pay me huge dividends some time down the road.

Because I'm using a manifold to feed multiple engines, I felt as if I should install check valves where the engine supply lines connect to the manifold. I'm afraid that one engine could want to pull fuel from another engine, and start messing with robbing an engine of primed fuel, or causing air and headaches to enter the system.

I'm waiting on the check valves to show up and I'm looking into different fuel pumps for my electric lift pump I want to install. I left myself plenty of room to fit the lift pump between the valves and "T's", but I'm stopped on this system until my parts show up early in the week. Besides having shut off valves at the manifold, I need shut off valves right next to the main engine and generator. While it may seem like I'm have too many valves on this system, I think that they will pay off big once I start having to service the engines and system.

Because of where I want to install the electric lift pump and and the type of pump I want, I held the 1/2" steel fuel line 1.25 inches off of the fuel tank. An added bonus of doing this is that I now have a nice grab rail running the starboard length of the engine room.

Fuel transfer system complete

2011-07-06T17:35:00.006-04:00

The fuel transfer system is complete, and I don't have to do any more work on it. Well, I guess a persons definition of "any more work" should be discussed over a beer sometime. I do have to decide which electrical circuit I am going to use and make that connection. I only have one circuit ran to the engine room so far ( lights) , but I'm going to be installing some more circuits in the next week or so as I am beginning to do some design with Kevin Morin ( www.metalboatbuilding.org) on the electrical system.

I backed my service truck in to the shop and pumped 30 or so gallons of fuel into tank #4 . I temporarily wired a plug end on to the fuel pump transfer switch and once I made sure I had the correct valves open ( I need to label the tanks), I turned the pump on. It took a about a minute for the pump to pick up the fuel, but once the the fuel hit the flow meter the sound of the pump changed and the flow meter started clicking off tenths of gallons. It felt good to finally have a system up and running.

To make sure things were as they appeared, I checked the amperage draw on the pump. The pump is only pulling 5 amps, which is lower than it's full load rating. I also ran the pump for five minutes to check the flow rate. The flow rate of the pump is just about 220 gallons per hour based on my five minute run time. The flow rate I measured is is exactly as advertised by the manufacturer. The 1000 series Racor filter is rated at 190 gallons per hour maximum flow, so I have to figure out what is happening with the measured flow rate of the pump and the maximum flow rate the filter is advertised as capable of. At a first glance, I would have figured that the filter can only physically allow 190 gallons per hour of flow through it given the micron size of the filter media. I might put in a call to Racor and ask their opinion. A gate valve would choke down the flow rate and give the pump some head to work against. I've always felt that pumps live longer if they have some head to push against.

I want to install a vacuum gauge on the filter to monitor when it begins to clog. I think I've seen Racors with a vacuum gauge in the "T" handle, and given how I've plumbed things, that looks like a good option.

After I had ran the electric pump for a half hour or so, I closed a valve, and opened the two valves for the emergency manual transfer pump. I pumped about five gallons to see how it worked, and I'm pleased to say it worked fine. I will say that whenever one of the kids makes it to ye ole shit list, they can meet me in the engine room to manually transfer a 100 gallons of fuel.

It really feels good to finally have a system up and running. Because I now have all the fuel pipe work completed, some of the smaller jobs will begin to fall in to place. I can now install the generator in it's final resting spot vs rolling it around the engine room on 3/4" pvc pipe. Once the generator is set, I can finish the conduit run for my AC in the engine room, and so on and so on....

Now that I have fuel running through the tanks, I will continue on my schedule and build the fuel system for the main engine and generator. This is not nearly as complex or costly as the transfer system, so hopefully I'll have that up and running in a week. I'll fire the engine once I have all the fuel parts in place.

Fuel system update- fuel transfer

2011-07-04T14:53:00.009-04:00

The fuel transfer system resides in the engine room on the port side of the boat against the aft water tight bulkhead. I've put a huge dent in the amount of work building the transfer system, and there is enough of the system completed for me to blog about. I want to use JIC fuel fittings on the lines between the intake manifold, the filter, the pump and the distribution intake, so I have to wait until Tuesday to get the lines made. Once I run the wire for the disconnect switch and get those lines fabricated, I'll be able to pump fuel from tank to tank.

I have four fuel tanks on board for a total of between 1300 - 1400 gallons. Three of the tanks will be used for storage, and the fourth tank will be a 200 gallon "day" tank that will be used to feed the main engine and the 10kw generator. The fuel transfer system is completely independent from the fuel delivery system which feeds the machinery out of the 200 gallon day tank.

Every day we are traveling on the boat we will manage our fuel by transferring fuel from tank to tank and making sure the day tank is full. As the fuel is transferred it will be filtered through a 1000 series Racor filter that will also remove water. The fuel that leaves the day tank to feed the machinery, will again pass through another Racor filter before being filtered by the factory filters on the main engine and generator. I have a mechanical flow meter in the transfer system that will be the primary way we keep track of how much fuel we have left and how much we are using. Once I fill the tanks and have some sort of base line for tank capacities, we'll use a log book to track fuel usage along with a flow meter on the main engine and dip sticks for the tanks.

The transfer system's pump is a rotary vane pump driven by a 120 volt 1/2 hp motor. The motor is continuous duty rated motor so I don't have to worry about run time. The pump and motor can move 220 gallons per hour which exceed the 180 gallon flow rate of the 1000 series Racor filter. I don't know if I need to put a gate valve on the pump to choke it down or if the Racor will do that for me. The motor pulls about 7 amps, and I'll have it wired in to the inverter circuit so I don' have to worry about having shore power or the generator running if I want to transfer fuel. The rotary vane pump is self priming and is pretty close to bullet proof. This is very long life pump made by Procon that should give me a long life of reliable service. If for some reason the pump or motor fails me, I have a manual pump plumbed into the system that will handle our fuel transfer needs. I got the idea of the manual pump from a careful builder doing a fine job on building their 55 footer. You can check out Peter and his families boat building blog here: building koloa . If the manual transfer pump fails me I can use one of the four drain valves and another type of manual pump to move fuel. If I don't feel like doing that, I can block the vents and carefully use my air compressor and a regulator to push fuel from tank to tank using the transfer manifolds.

When transferring fuel,the fuel is pulled for one of the four tanks via a four port manifold. After the fuel goes through the filter, pump, and flow meter it is then pushed through a distribution manifold with five valved ports. Depending on what combination of valves is opened is how the fuel will find it's way to the desired tank. On the five valve distribution manifold, four valves are for directing fuel to any of the four tanks, and the fifth valve is used for pumping fuel to some place else. If I ever have to give fuel to a stranded boat or get fuel off of the boat for some other reason, the fifth valve will be the way to do it. I actually have a sixth port of the distribution manifold since I did not know from which end I was going to be feeding the manifold. I have the sixth port plugged. All the flexible fuel line I've been using in the engine room is Coast Guard approved marine fuel hose.

This was a pretty involved project, but I'm for sure on the tail end of it and will have it operational within a few days. If I were to do it all over again, I would have paid more attention to how I was going to run the piping while I was building the tanks. A plan would have been nice, but you know how that goes. Stainless steel pipe would have been another good thing, but since I'm on a shoe string budget, painted steel pipe will have to do. All the piping has been air tested from the manifolds, through the tanks to the deck fills and vents. I'll probably put 30 gallons of fuel in the system and start moving fuel around to clean the tanks. The next part of the fuel system to build is the delivery system and returns for the main engine and generator. I'll be starting on the delivery system this week.

Fuel system

2011-06-23T21:42:00.007-04:00

This is going to be the first of a few posts relating to my fuel system. I'm glad I did not bid building this system for someone as I'm finding this job burning up a lot more time and material than I would have guessed.

The first order of business for building the fuel system were installing the fill pipes. I have four integral tanks in the engine room with a capacity between 1200 - 1300 gallons. I have one 200 gallon tank that I will use as a day tank. The day tank will supply the main engine and generator with fuel. On the aft deck of the boat I'll have two fill locations, one fill for the starboard tanks, and one fill for the port side tanks. Both the port side and starboard side fuel fill pipes have ball valves in line to direct fuel to either the forward or aft fuel tank on each side of the boat. When I want to fill the forward port tank, I close aft ball valve and open the forward valve. Likewise, when I want to fill the aft port tank, I close the forward ball valve, and open the aft valve. When the tanks are full, all the ball valves on all the fill lines are closed. The fill pipes are steel pipe, 2" sch. 40.

The tank vents are 1" steel pipe sch. 40 and will exit the boat with the fill pipes and terminate at the fill stations.

After the fill pipes were fabricated I turned my attention to the fuel transfer piping. With four tanks on board, and one of those tanks being used as my day tank, I have to be able to transfer fuel from any one tank to any tank I desire. In order to transfer fuel I'll utilize an electric pump with a manual pump as my back up. Each tank has a dedicated pick up tube that extends to about 1" above the tank bottom for the transfer system. I added a second pick up tube to each tank to give me the option on using the second pick up tube for feeding the machinery while still having a stand alone fuel transfer system. The fuel transfer system has a large Racor filter that will clean the fuel and separate any water in the fuel before the fuel goes to the day tank.

I wanted to get a decent flow rate out of my transfer system, and because I was a little nervous about friction loss in the transfer pipe, I used 3/4" sch. 40 steel pipe for the transfer system.

I'm in the excavating business, and I'm always calling to have underground utilities marked before I dig on a job site. The marking companies spray paint the location of the various utilities on the ground using the following colors: red for electric, blue for water, yellow for gas, orange for cable and phone, and green for fuel or oil related. Given I have to paint the pipe to protect it, I have chosen to paint all the fuel related parts in the engine room green.

There is a lot to the fuel system, and I feel as if I got a good start on my first week of working on it.

Guest cabin complete

2011-06-12T16:57:00.011-04:00

I've finished the work in the kids cabin, and I'm moving my tools back to the engine room. All the major wood work is completed in the cabins and bathroom except for the building of the passage doors. I've got to decide on the door hardware before I commit to building the doors. I'm a little burned out on wood work, and a little time away from wood working will do me some good allowing me to finish some of the mechanical systems.

I had a visit from fellow boat builder Brian Russell last year and took some of his comments to heart. Brian is building a Dix alloy sailboat and you can check it out here:Welcome to Odyssey YAchts
While Brian and I were looking over my build he had some concern about the lack of ventilation in my hull. His concern had been gnawing at me for a while and so I started to make some choices about how I was going to keep air moving in the cabins. Since I'm blogging about the kids cabin, I might as well talk about the ventilation plan for this room. The guest cabin has a 20" x 20" Lemar Ocean Hatch as it's primary source of ventilation. I wanted more vents in the cabin that would work while under way and while we were off of the boat, so I added two six inch vents in each corner of the cabin. I found some 6" SCH.40 galvanized pipe at the scrap yard and purchased eight feet to fabricate the passive ventilation system. I carefully laid out the vent locations then cut away the insulation two inches larger than the pipe. I wedged a metal bucket with a little water in it tight to the ceiling @ the cut area, then used my plasma cutter to cut out the deck large enough to accept the pipe. I welded in my pipe vents and extended them up to an elevation lower than the cap of the Portuguese bridge. Because of the high bulwarks and me wanting the vent intake up where it will actually catch some air, I want to make sure the cowl is above the Portuguese bridge when I'm finished . I'll fabricate some Dorade boxes to work with the 5" cowl vents I'm looking for. When it's all said and done, the air intake will be above the Portuguese bridge, and the cowls will look quite shippy. I primed and painted the below deck pipe work then glued some plywood on the below deck pipe ends to act as a nailer for the bead board ceiling. Because I'm paranoid about sweating metal, I wrapped the pipe in closed cell foam gasket material I had in the shop, and spray foamed the rest with some of those cans you get at the hardware store. Doing metal work in a finished section of the boat is a bitch and really slows me down, but this was something that had to be done. I also added a 12 volt fan in each corner of the cabin that will be controlled by their own switch. The kids cabin also has one four inch duct for air conditioning and heat when the weather calls.

The last wood working project in this cabin was building the drawer unit under the port bunks. There was really not enough usable space to build the lower of the two drawers so I built a cubby and installed a drawer front on the cubby. I installed two self closing cabinet hinges on this cubby/drawer along with a catch to hold the drawer front fast. The drawer unit is built against the bathroom bulkhead, and that angle turned out to be 28 degrees. Building the angled drawer was a challenge that took more time than one would figure, but I think the effort was worth it as this drawer added a fair amount of easily accessible storage. The drawer will have one inch of clearance as it slides past the bathroom door casing. The bathroom door will have to be closed to use the drawer unit, but I'm pretty sure it will be closed all the time since having the door closed makes the room just a fuzz larger.

It's not green

2011-06-07T21:26:00.013-04:00

For anyone who thinks this ceiling is green, I have news for you. The manufacturer calls this color " Early Morning Forest Glenn". Once I figure out what a Glenn is I'll probably have a better clue as to why this is not called green. But in case anyone cares, from this day forward, I'm going to say that I have a green ceiling in the kids cabin.

I decided to use bead board for the ceiling in the kids cabin. I chose bead board because it is relatively inexpensive, has a traditional yacht look, is light weight and easily installed. White is probably a more traditional color, but I like the green, and I think it works.

The work in this room is winding down and after a few more evenings of work, this room will be finished. I still have a two more weeks until Spring is officially over, and I think I'm going to make my deadline of getting this room done before Summer. I hate to have a schedule on the boat build, but I want to get her finished and out of the barn, so I'm pushing a little harder and placing some deadlines upon myself.

The way the boat is framed, has caused me to build access panels along the port and starboard side where the ceiling meets the hull sides. On both sides of the boat, I now have an easily accessed chase from the bow to the engine room. Once inside the engine room, I'm good with screwing conduit and other mechanical parts to the walls and ceilings where I can get my hands and eyes on them, so I don't need decorative chase ways.

The port side of the hull chase way houses the water lines feeding the cabins. The starboard side has the spare forced main from the head if I ever decide to go with a toilet other than the composting unit. The four inch duct for the heat and AC that feeds the kids cabin and dressing room will also be in this chase. I think I have room to get the hydraulic lines for the anchor winch in this chase also, but that has yet to be decided. I really think the hydraulic lines will work well here, so maybe I'll just have to make that work.

I had welded a chase way in the frames along the center line of the hull so I built a removable panel for the bead ceiling to access that area. Other than a few visible screws that I painted over, the chase is almost impossible to see, and is quick and easy to remove. This center chase was my original choice for the anchor winch hydraulic lines, but I'm not so sure now. I'm leaving the small ceiling out of the area above the blanket chest until I decide on the hydraulic line route.

I installed the two port light trim rings, and also started to fit the battens that will cover the hull liner joints. I've yet to install the hatch, but I was able to trim 80% of the hatch as the top trim piece needs to be removed to access the hatch mounting bolts.

The guest cabin has three flush mounted 12 volt LED ceiling lights controlled by one switch. Each of the four bunks also has a LED bulkhead mounted reading light on their own switch. There are also two 12v fans in each corner with their own switch. I also have a duplex 120 volt AC receptacle for a TV along with a coax box. The blue water line you see in ceiling headed towards the bow is for the anchor wash down.

Guest cabin updated #3 - Storage

2011-05-30T06:15:00.012-04:00

For the cabinetry I've built on the boat prior to building the guest cabin, I've used frame and panel construction. The cabinets I've built in the guest cabin are what I would call frame less construction.

There are four bunks in the guest cabin. Each bunk is 6' 6" long with a minimum width of 24". The overall average ceiling height in the cabin is 6' 8". Underneath the lower bunks are two cubby hole frame less storage spaces. Underneath the port side bunk I've added a large drawer, and one more not so large cubby. The 45 gallon gray water holding tank is underneath the starboard lower bunk so no cabinets were able to be built in that space. Between the port and starboard bunks is another cubby on the same elevation as the other lower cubbies. Each set of bunks has a bulkhead. Because of the the standard bunk length and the left over space I had after laying out the bunks, I created a large blanket chest forward of the two lower bunks. The blanket chest is a huge storage space, and all the linens for the cabin will easily fit in this space. All the linens for the rest of the boat could also go in this space. The lid of the blanket chest serves as a step to gain access to the anchor chain locker when one needs to get in to that area. Since I'm using a deck winch, I see the anchor chain locker becoming storage for one thing or another. To both port and starboard of the anchor chain locker, I created four more cubbies that are behind the bulkhead of each of the upper bunks.

For the drawer and not so large cubby, I stuck with the frame construction method. I could have probably made a frame less unit, but the framed method seems to work best for drawers. I've not yet built the drawer, and this will probably be the last major wood working project I will do in the guest cabin.

It seems like a battle is being waged to gain every inch of storage space on the boat. In all honesty, there is a tremendous amount of storage space, and it is kind of fun to develop it. Once I get finished with the cabinetry in the engine room, the salon, the wheel house, the companion way from above , and the lazzerette, I see us having to develop a chart or map to inventory where we store all the "stuff" we are going to stash on board.

Guest Cabin update #2

2011-05-21T15:48:00.007-04:00

There are a few things that could be changed in the guest cabin's wood work; some things that I can change, somethings that are not worth changing. One thing that has bothered me and that I was able to change without too much difficulty was the shape of the lower cubby. Just to keep readers oriented, these cubby bins are under the two lower bunks.

The lower center cubby was the first cubby I built, and I was never happy with how it looked, but I pushed on. I had an idea to give the cubby a cover, and I was intending on the cover dropping in to place and being held fast by a wedge screwed on the back of the cover, hence the shape. The more I looked at it the more it bothered me. The shape was wrong, and the wood grain was running the wrong way. With the shape of the drawers, the race track shaped cubbies, and the trapezoid cubby, the room was beginning to look like a pre-school "guess the shape game".

Changing the shape required building another panel. After consulting with the design team, I fired off a memo to the design team and their response was immediate and firm. The design team felt since the length of the new cubby was shorter than the other two cubbies, the design team insisted that us minions here in the fabricating department should use a coffee can to shape the radius corners vs the five gallon bucket we used for the longer cubby. Not any old coffee can mind you, rather we should use the jumbo size favored by large families and insomniacs.

The cubbies are actually pretty large in regard to how much a person could stow in them. The port and starboard cubbies each have a shelf with a two inch fiddle to help keep things in place, and the space goes back under the bunk a good arms length. The cubby is not as convenient as a drawer, but it was a sensible solution to the space needed. The cubbies were also fast and economical to build, and they look damn good from the view of my well equipped, palatial cabin.

I find it easier to move forward once I get the nagging problems off of my plate.

Guest cabin update #1

2011-05-16T08:29:00.007-04:00

I've found that one of the problems with my plan is that I really have no plan other than making the boat look like the picture ( for the most part). It seems that every time I get going on finishing a wood project, I have to stop and attend to a metal project I've been blowing off. One of my biggest goals has been to build the boat so I can always easily get back to critical systems for future maintenance. Since I don't want to bury some things behind wood work, I wait until I'm doing the wood work before I finalize some of the metal work decisions.

The bow thruster resides under the sole of the guest cabin in the bow of the boat. Because of the extreme hull shape in the bow and me wanting to get the most space out of this area, I waited until now to install the bow thruster and finalize how the sole interacts with the bow thruster compartment. I'm using a hydraulic thruster ( Key Power Inc. ) and from the start of the build, I knew I wanted the thruster in a water tight compartment so that is what I framed. I cut the hole int the thruster tube to accept the thruster saddle, and once I saw the saddle installed I felt the water tight compartment I had framed was too large for the hydraulic thruster. This are of the boat is where my ballast gets installed so I decided to re work this water tight box and give some of the box area back to it's original purpose of holding ballast. I cut the box lid in half, and welded in a bulkhead to create a bow thruster box alongside the ballast box. This ballast compartment is one of seven ballast compartments ( the bow thruster occupies the eight ballast compartment). I have a gut feeling that the boat is going to trim heavy on the port side, so I decided to put the thruster on the port side and re activate the starboard side ballast compartment.

The boat designer calls for about 5200 lbs of ballast ( increased by 900 lbs due to increased fuel tank size). The cubic footage in my seven compartments is more than enough to accommodate all of my ballast.

I welded a tab on to the bow thruster lid and ballast compartment lid so I could bolt on cleats for attachment points for the sole. I also held the hull liner up off of the sole by 1.25" in this area to allow me to remove the sole in this area to access the bow thruster. This was a tricky part of the boat in regard to having a removable sole, but it did work out nicely. I've been holding all the wood 1/2" off of the sole so I can have a place to tuck the carpet vs having to add base board later.

I'll install the thruster later this summer once I'm back into the mechanical systems mode. All the cutting and welding is finished regarding this area so I re painted the compartments and lids before I screwed down the plywood sole.

Kids cabin/guest cabin

2011-05-08T10:00:00.007-04:00

I'm well into the finishing the wood work in the guest cabin ( kids cabin ), and I'm feeling good regarding my schedule of having the wood work finished before the end of Spring. Since I do not need to do any welding regarding the pilot house install above this area of the boat, I'm going to go ahead and install the ceiling, doors, and light fixtures before I start a new area on the boat. The pilot house is directly above the master cabin and bathroom, so I have to wait to install those ceilings until after I weld the pilot house to the boat deck.

The guest cabin has four permanent bunks with two being on the port side, and two on the starboard side. The bunks are 24" wide, and 6' 6" long. The framing is steel wrapped in wood with a 3/4" plywood deck. The clearance between the lower and upper bunks after the 4" mattresses are installed will be 23". Each bunk will have it's own reading light. I wired the guest cabin with an AC receptacle along with a coaxial receptacle on the bathroom wall so a TV could be installed. There will be three ceiling light fixtures in the guest cabin that will be controlled by one switch. Each of the reading lights for the bunks will have their own switch. All off the lights on the boat, along with the guest cabin lights, will be LED type fixtures.

Because of the way the bunks had to be installed, I created a divider between the two lower bunks. This is a fairly good sized room in terms of a bunk room on a mid sized yacht, but I am cramming a lot of function into a relatively compact space and I have to pay attention to make sure the occupants have their "own space". The divider walls off about 16" of bunk, and goes a long way towards helping those in the lower bunks feel as if they have some privacy. If I were going to sleep on one of the lower bunks, without the divider, I'd be in a constant state of bad attitude given the closeness. The divider will also serve as a point to locate the ladder that will be needed to access the upper bunks. The divider also ( some more dumb luck) acts as a vent for the blanket chest which in turns will allow ventilation into the bilge. A small fan placed in the open bottom end of the divider has the potential to provide air flow all the way down the bilge to station #9 which is the water tight steel bulkhead of the engine room.

The guest cabin area of the boat is a pretty complex room given the extreme curvature of the hull, the odd shapes I've created, and the obvious challenge of getting so much sleeping and storage area into a tight space. To be honest with you , a 55 footer would have suited us a little better, but that was not in the budget. The maximized space of the bunk room works well in my opinion now that I created the guest cabin dressing room. These two rooms compliment each other extremely well and one room now relies upon the other. With the future installations of bunk curtains, privacy, might be a little easier by all on our little trawler yacht.

This room is going to take a few posts to work through, so being the creative guy that I am, I decided to start at the beginning. Breaking the bunk room down to a basic level, the room is sheathed with 1/2" birch plywood, then all the bunks and cabinetry are being built out of the air dried Cherry.

We will be using a deck winch to handle our anchor gear, so the huge anchor chain locker in the guest cabin will not be used for the anchor chain. I'm acting like the locker will be used for anchor chain ( possible future use), so I installed the drain in the bottom of the locker along with the water tight door I fabricated. The water tight door kind of ruins the ambiance of the wood work, so I built a wood door to cover the steel door. The wood door is held in place by a wedge and some Velcro, and takes about two seconds to remove. One heavy duty door dog along with a heavy 1 1/2" rubber gasket is what creates the seal for the steel door. The door dog came from the water tight door I cut down in order to make a door for the rear of the engine room.

Spring Break

2011-04-30T06:29:00.004-04:00

Work on the boat had to stop for a couple of weeks while we took the family to the Florida Keys for a Spring break vacation.

When we hit the road leaving from Ohio it was raining and 36 degrees. When we arrived in Little Torch Key twenty hours later, it was sunny and 88 degrees. To be honest with you, it really hasn't stopped raining since we left for Florida as our part of the world has just recorded the wettest month on record( April).

We rented a house on Little Torch Key. The house was on the water with the rear facing due east. It was nice watching the sun come up while drinking coffee on the back porch with Shannon.

While the time away from the Ohio winter was not long enough, our time in Florida sure did help re charge some batteries. I plan on getting back to the keys, but the next time will be while we are cruising on the trawler.

Composting toilet update

2011-03-24T16:40:00.002-04:00

This will probably be the one and only update on the composting toilet.

I put the composting toilet into service as soon as I had the room ready. After a few days of use and continuing my work in the boat I started to notice an odor. I was working in the forward cabin, kneeling on the floor working on the valve that drains the gray water holding tank. I kept getting a nasty whiff of funk, and after not much investigating, I concluded the odor to be coming from the composting toilet. I kept down playing the funky smell, and telling myself this was the "earthy" smell these units put forth. After a few days of this, I put down my tools and said to myself " this isn't going to work for me". I started looking at the vent pipe, the filter in the outlet and inlet, and put my hand over the inlet to make sure the fan was working. My hands are beat up and calloused, so I really could not tell how much flow was coming out of vent. I decided to get the lighter I keep to light the wood stove and see how much air that fan was putting out of the vent. Holding the lighter by the vent outlet, I determined the flow rate was pretty lame, and for that matter, it appeared that the flow rate was zero. So I moved the lighter to the inlet side of of the inlet to see if I could witness how much air was being sucked in. I now was thinking that the unit was not sealed to well, and maybe the funky smelling vapors were leaking out past the gasket and not making it to the vent outlet. Putting the lighter up against the fan inlet, I was surprised when the lighter was blown out. I re lit the lighter, and damn if the same thing did not happen again... the flame was blown out. I had the fan installed backwards, and the unit was venting into the cabin. The composting toilet is designed to pull air in across the solid waste bin, then vent that air out of the cabin via a 1 1/2" vent line, and I had it working just the opposite.

Now that the unit is plumbed correctly, I'm happy to say it is working great. While the usage is light ( two" events" per day), the odor is non existent. There is a slight musty smell when the door is opened, but it is neither offensive nor strong. The unit is easy to operate, and more easy to keep clean. The draw on the battery I use to power the fan is extremely low. The only thing I will do different in the future is to use a more compost friendly type of paper. Paper designed to break down would greatly increase the capacity of the bin. The bin is nowhere near full, but it is obvious that the paper does not degrade as quickly as other material.

This type of toilet is probably not for every boater, but I'm going to have to claim this as a success. It's pretty stinking simple, and my first hand experience finds that it works exactly as designed. I doubt very much I'll go back to the old style toilets.

After reading these last posts, you're probably thinking I have too much time on my hand, so I'm going to change the subject "matter" now. My next post in a couple of weeks will show some progress in the guest cabins.

Here's a picture of the cabinet I built for above the toilet. The amount of storage in this boat is going to be nice.

Composting Toilet

2011-03-09T18:12:00.011-05:00

As of press time, deciding the toilet type was one of the more thought provoking decisions made on the boat build to date. Every boat I've been involved with has had a macerating type toilet. Every boat owner I know has a macerating type toilet. Every boat owner in my neck of the woods whom I spoke with regarding composting toilets thought this to be a foolish idea ( I guess old habits are hard to dump). It is for all of the reasons I just stated, and a few ideas of my own, that I decide to utilize composting toilets on the trawler.

I'm not going to go into a ton of detail on this toilet, but I will say that it is a simple device that is well thought out in regard to use and maintenance. I was a little nervous about going this route, but after installing the unit and giving it the twice over evil eye, I'm feeling pretty confident that this composting toilet is going to make life on board more simple.

I went ahead and installed and finished the toilet area of the bathroom so I could have a working toilet while I build the boat. The toilet has a 12 volt fan built in to power air into the composting bin. The fan only pulls a few mill amps of current, so I decided to power it off of the circuit for the shower sump. I installed a simple set of 12 volt thumb screws in a wall box to make the connection to power the fan. This is a fast, simple connection that is reliable and looks pretty decent. Before I sheathed the walls, I installed a 1 1/2" PVC vent line to vent the composting bin. The vent line will eventually exit the front wall of the wheel house. After one drops a bomb in the composting bin, a stainless steel handle needs to be cranked a few times to mix the material in with the peat composting media. The handle can be used on either side of the unit, but since we are all right handed, I used the right side. Under normal conditions, the unit can handle about 80 events ( gotta love being politically correct while trying to talk about defecating). The science behind this is simple: keep the solids and liquid separate, keep oxygen moving in all the right places, good ventilation and moist composting media. This thing will work.

I'm pretty much sold on this idea, but I still installed a 1 1/2" schedule 40 PVC transport line from the bathroom to the main holding tank of the boat. Getting that line installed was a pretty simple thing, and because I used rigid PVC, the line will last as long as I'm on this world. If the composting toilet fails, I got a huge piece of infrastructure in place to use a different style head.

I read every post on every boat cruising forum I could find regarding composting toilets. I could not find one negative thing written about this style toilet. All post I've read by hard core cruisers and live a boards all agree that those who switch to this style head do not switch back to the macerating, vacuum, or manual style heads along with the associated holding tanks. A large part of my excavating business is installing septic systems form homes, and I'm pretty happy that I won't have the mini version of a septic tank on the boat. I now have two gray water tanks for a total capacity of 135 gallons, and 8 fresh water tanks for a total capacity of 360 gallons. It feels good knowing that none of the precious fresh water will be needed for flushing.

As the hour meter starts to tick and time begins to accumulate on the composting toilet, I'll start giving some updates on the performance. A few of you out there might be thinking that I'm jumping the gun by getting a working toilet on board at this stage in the game, but the truth is that I'm psyched to have another place to sit and ponder.

Guest cabin dressing room update #2

2011-03-06T07:59:00.007-05:00

The last few weeks have found me getting the Carver boat ready for it's new owner so not much has been getting done on the boat build. Now that the carver is finished and out of the shop, I'm back working on the boat build.

I received the new sink so I was able to complete the installation of the top, the sink, and the faucet. All the cabin plumbing connections are now complete. If I had the pressure pump and a couple of days work, I'd be able to use the sinks.

I installed a new valve for the through hull fitting under the guest cabin sink. The valve I had originally installed was a cheap gate valve that was probably doomed for failure. I installed a more corrosion resistant ball valve in place of the gate valve and hopefully saved myself a future headache. I had read on another forum that gate valves have no place on boats, and I agree.

The through hull fitting under this sink is the only through hull fitting for the cabins sinks and shower. This through hull fitting is a stainless steel piece of pipe, welded in to the hull that is threaded on the inboard end. The ball valve threads on to the pipe, and that is my basic through hull fitting. If gray water needs to be held, the red handled ball valve is shut, the black handled ball valve is opened, and the sump pump selector valve is moved to the holding tank position, then all the gray water goes to the holding tank. If we can discharge gray water, the red handled ball valve is opened, the black handled ball valve is closed, and the sump selector valve is moved to the discharge position so all gray water is either pumped or gravity flow overboard.

The galley sink, the clothes washing machine, and the half bath above will have another holding tank and one through hull fitting to deal with that gray water.

Guest cabin dressing room update

2011-02-10T08:05:00.008-05:00

The six cabinet doors are finished and I have two coats of Urethane on all the wood in the guest cabin dressing room. I also have the sink base top completed, but it's not installed yet as I changed my mind on the sink. I had purchased a square stainless steel sink for this room, but because the top is an odd shape, I could not get the sink installed in such a way that it looked aesthetically pleasing. A square sink on a trapezoid top just doesn't look right, so I decided to sell the square sink, and buy a round sink. I'm still waiting on the round sink to arrive, then I'll finish the sink base install.

I had enough 1/4" Cherry plywood to use for the doors, so I decide to use a flat panel vs a raised panel for these six doors. I used the same style and rail method of door building as the master cabin. Using the flat panels shaved quite a few hours off of the door construction while helping preserve my stock of air dried lumber.

This room, along with the master cabin, are as finished as they are going to get for right now. Once I've got the boat at the launch site, I'll give all the wood one more coat of Urethane. I've still got quite a bit of work to do and it makes no sense to me to spend my time putting any more urethane on the wood as it's going to get banged up. There's enough protection on everything to get it through the rest of the build.

I'm going to start on the kids cabins sometime next week. I'm feeling confident that I'll get all the cabin wood work finished this Spring.

Guest cabin dressing room

2011-01-29T11:47:00.012-05:00

The basic layout of the cabin area below is as follows: Down four steps from the salon above. Once at the bottom of the steps, you can either turn left through a door and get to the master cabin, or go straight through another door to get to the guest cabin dressing room/hallway. One has to go through this area to get to the guest cabin/kids cabin located in the forward area of the hull. Each cabin has a door to access the common bathroom where the shower and toilet is located. Each cabin ( master and guest) has it's own sink. The engine room is accessed from the master cabin through a water tight steel door.

Standing in the guest cabin dressing room, one will find a large sink base with storage underneath, four wall mounted cabinets, and a bench seat with storage underneath it. There will be two ceiling mounted DC lights, and one ceiling mounted AC light with all lights being controlled by switches on the wall. There is also a decent amount of wall space available to have some hanging storage without impacting ones ability to walk through the space.

Because of my wish filled thinking regarding shower sump pumps, I had to re think how I was going to hold the gray water from the shower and cabin sinks. I decided to add a holding tank, and the most logical place for it was under one of the bunks against the dressing room bulkhead. I was going to buy a plastic tank, but since I had enough stainless plate left over from the water tank construction I decided to fabricate my own and save some cash. The tank ended up with 47 gallons of capacity.

Under the sink base in the dressing room is some of the gray water plumbing. The through hull fitting you see is above the water line. When we have to hold our gray water, the blue valve will be shut and the black valve will be open. This will direct the water to the main sump which will then direct the water to the 47 gallon holding tank I just built. When we can discharge gray water, the blue valve will be open, the black valve will be closed, and the shower sump will discharge overboard via the black pipe when the sump selector valve is in that mode. It's a pretty simple set up albeit a bit on the bulky side, but I made everything from parts found in the shop and did not have to depart with any cash. The elbow on he end of the manifold is for the guest cabin dressing room sink once I get that sink installed.

I built four more cabinets to fill up the wall in this room, and stopped them well short of the port light. One of the cabinets will be the medicine cabinet above the sink, while the other three will be general storage. The cabinets are 12 inches deep at the base, and about 18" deep at the top. I'm also using these cabinets as the chase for the air conditioning duct that will feed the guest/kids cabin. That duct will be a four inch flexible pipe.

In order to give one as much privacy as possible, there will be a door between the dressing room and the bunk room. The door will be 20" wide.

I had enough room to create a bench in the dressing room so people could sit down while they were getting dressed. I installed a piano hinge on the lid of the bench so the bench could double as a locker for more storage.

The room is a fuzz narrow, but I'm able to easily navigate through it without bumping my knees or having to turn the least bit sideways. I think this space will be an important part of the boat in regard to helping all on board with privacy, and a sense of having ones own space. To be honest, this is a very comfortable room even though it's function is mostly utilitarian.

I have six doors to build for this room, and one more sheet of plywood to install on the partition between the master cabin and this space. I also have to plug all the screw holes, sand everything, and get a coat or two of finish on the wood. Once those jobs are finished, I'm ready to start work on the sleeping room and its four bunks. Once the doors are installed and some finish on the wood, I'll post some more pics.

Anchor Winch

2011-01-16T20:36:00.003-05:00

Wood working continues in other parts of the boat, but I thought I'd blog a bit about the anchor winch.

I'd always intended on using a chain windlass to handle my anchor, but this used winch was available, so I made the switch to a deck winch. This type of winch is a pretty simple piece of equipment with very few working parts which should provide me with a reliable tool to handle the ground tackle. As you can tell, this is a used winch, but given the simple nature of the beast, it will not take much to go through it. Once I'm done with the wood working, I'll do a re build on this winch.

The valving on this winch lets me power down, free spool, and power up. The line pull on the unit is 1500 lbs, which is adequate to handle my ground tackle.

I like the commercial, fish boat look of this winch, and I think it will look sharp on pulpit of my trawler. The winch is on the fence in terms of being just large enough for our boat. I spoke with the manufacturer, and they felt as if it would do the job. The line pull on the next two larger size models is the same, but the thickness of the metal base is more on the larger units, along with being able to handle more rode. This unit is cast aluminum, and the base plate ( the area where the winch bolts to my deck) thickness is 3/4". The manufacturer was concerned that a boat of my displacement might risk cracking the base plate if I were to get caught in a strong blow. He suggested that I use rope vs wire rope, and snub the anchor rode to a bit. The winch can handle 275' of 5/8" rope along with 40' of 3/8 chain leaving a 1" gap below the housing. I like to use a 5:1 scope when anchoring, and the amount of rode is at my minimum comfort level. I've never anchored in more than 40' of water, but you never know.

It's nice to be able to check another item off the list.

More Plumbing

2011-01-03T08:03:00.011-05:00

I finished making all the plumbing connections for the cabins.

99% of the connections are under the sole in the bathroom. This space has turned into a busy area as it has passing through it four fill lines for the water tanks, the shower/sink pump sump, the water supply lines for the two sinks, the drain lines for the two sinks, the drain line for the shower, the "Y" valve for directing the sump discharge, the transport lines for the sump discharge, the 1 1/2" transport line for a possible future macerating type toilet, and the wiring for the sump. I made a valid attempt at keeping this space orderly, and if I had used some more fittings on the drain and discharge lines, I could have kept things really tight but I instead opted for less fittings and more flexible pipe.

I'm going to build the shower stall out of tile. Since I was working in this area, I decided to install the backer board for the tile, and the shower pan. Before I installed the backer board, I glued a closed cell foam gasket to the flange of the port light to stop condensation. Once the tile is installed along with the port light, I'll detail the gasket more so it will make more sense to anyone reading. As per a request from the three woman in the house, I built a ledge in the shower stall for a place to prop up a leg.

After making all the connections, I ran the shower sump to verify the flow rate. The shower sump is not going to have enough ass to move the shower water to my proposed gray water tank area ( the rear of the boat). I'm going to have to find another area for my gray water holding tank. The best place for this tank is going to be close to the overboard discharge point in the forward cabins. The tank will probably end up in the "V" up against the crash bulkhead @ station #1. I think I'll be able to fit a 40 gallon tank. My other choice is going to be under one of the kids bunks. The problem with going under the bunk, is that I'll eliminate a much needed storage cabinet.

I'm ready to sheath the bathroom, the dressing room/hallway, and part of the kids cabin. I'm going to have to hold off on sheathing the rest of the cabin until I get the gray water tank installed.

I'm going to use a composting toilet, but just in cast it does not perform, I installed a transport line for a future macerating style toilet. I plumbed this in with 1 1/2" sch. for pipe, using pressure fittings. I wanted to stay away from flexible pipe for this application so I had to use a few 45 degree fittings to get the pipe squared back up with the framing as it enters the bathroom area. This 1 1/2" line goes to the rear of the boat where I'll have a black water tank. The folks at Raritan assure me that their toilets can handle the lift and length of pipe just fine.

Cabin Plumbing

2010-12-19T19:01:00.008-05:00

The master cabin wood work is complete and before I can continue wood work in the rest of the lower hull, I had to get some plumbing issues worked in.

Each cabin has it's own sink. There is a common area shared by both cabins for the shower and toilet. The guest cabin has a bunk room, and a separate dressing area where the guest cabin sink resides. The time was now upon me to get all the water lines and drains lines installed for these areas.

For the shower I decided to do a build a conventional shower pan with cement and a pvc liner. I'll use tile as the finished shower floor. The shower drains to a shower sump, then the gray water will be directed either over board, or to a holding tank in the aft section. Since the sink in the master cabin is amid ship, and I did not want a through hull fitting ( I only have one below the water line through hull fitting on board) for the sink, I decided to share the master cabin sink share the shower sump. I plumbed the master cabin sink into the shower sump with 1" flexible PVC.

The guest cabin has it's own sink, and this sink discharges directly over board, or into the shower sump. The drain line for the guest cabin sink is also 1" flexible PVC.

I installed the shower valve in the head. I also installed the sink valve in the master cabin. The sink valve will be installed in the guest cabin once I have the wood work completed in that area.

The biggest decision I had to make was how to run the 1/2" water lines for all these devices. I had the choice to either run one hot and one cold from the water pump and have a forest of "T"
fittings under the sole, have each fixture be fed from a central manifold that distributed the hot and cold. I chose to have a central manifold to supply the boat. Having a bunch of "T" fittings did little to give me a warm fuzzy feeling on future maintenance of the boat, and the manifold just made good sense. The hot and cold manifold will be in the lazzerette area of the boat, and will make maintenance and winterizing a breeze. If I choose to expand the water system, I'll do so from this manifold. Since I'll have an air compressor on board, winterizing will be just a matter of opening manifold valves, and blowing all the lines out from one location.

I ran all the water lines in one bundle down the port side of the boat. I had drilled a two inch hole through the galley frames, and installed rubber grommets in the holes to protect the water lines. The rest of the path for the water lines ran through a chase I had created with cabinets and a little framing. The framed chase is easily accessed through the cabinets, or by removing a panel in the master cabin. The framed chase also houses some electric conduit, the water port side water tanks vent lines manifold, the hydraulic lines for the steering system, and more than likely, the hydraulic lines for leading the the wheel house. A pretty busy chase to say the least. The starboard side of the boat has a similar chase that houses the air conditioning feed for the cabins, the toilet waste transport line( if I decide to use a pump model), and some electric conduit.

Since I wanted fill the two inch grommets in the frames, I decided to include the wash down line for the anchor area ( one 1/2" line ), and I also had enough room to include a 1/2" line that will supply compressed air to the wheel house. I'll probably "T" off of this air line in the wheel house and run air to the wash down pump area. When ever I have to get into the area under the bow pulpit, I'll use an impact wrench to remove the 15 or so bolts holding the on the cover plate.

I'm leaning towards installing a composting toilet so I installed an 1 1/2" vent line for that type of toilet. I also have a 1 1/2" sch. 40 line installed to transport waste to a black water tank if I decide to use a macerating type toilet.

Since I had the master cabin sink valves installed I wanted to see how the sink fixture looked installed. Because I was scrounging for every available inch in the master cabin, it made more sense to have the sink valve mounted on the wall vs mounted on the sink top. I've never seen that type of valve before, and I'm real happy with how it looks. I also like the look of the under mount sink. In regard to the under mount sink, there was quite a bit more size choice's in a bar style vs a vanity style as long as one can live with the bar size sink strainer ( I'm one of those folks who can live with bar style sink strainer).

Medicine Cabinet

2010-11-29T20:17:00.005-05:00

The last cabinet in the master cabin is the medicine cabinet that resides over the sink. The medicine cabinet is a basic cabinet with solid sides, a ply back, and a frame and panel door. I've yet to assemble the door although I have all the parts cut and milled. I was going to have a mirror made, then use the mirror as a panel and permanently install it the same way as one would install a panel. That method is probably not such a wise idea so I think I'll have a mirror made, then use clips to hold it against the panel. When the mirror gets broken, it will be a simple matter to get a new one.

I wanted to add some interest to the medicine cabinet so for the side of the cabinet everyone will see, I chose a piece of highly figured wood. The piece I used came from the crotch of the tree and has a lot of interesting, flame like grain. To add a little more detail to a pretty basic piece, I decided to use dovetails to join the case parts.

I hand cut the dovetails vs using a jig to machine them with a router. I like the look of hand cut dovetails, and given the time it takes to set up a jig, it's just as fast to hand cut the joint.

All the measuring is done by using a marking gauge, a square to transfer lines, and eyeball judgement. I use a pencil to mark the tails, and a awl to scribe the lines for the pins. I use a dovetail saw to make the vertical cuts, then use a chisel to chop out the waste leaving my lines. I use my chisel as a layout tool to mark the ends of the pins. By using that chisel as a dimension, I know the chisel will fit in the joint making chopping a breeze. Speaking of making chisel work a breeze, I kind of think a chisel is useless unless it's sharp enough to shave hair off of ones arm. When sharpening my chisels and planes, I start with an oil stone, then finish the task using Japanese water stones. The last stone I use puts a mirror finish on the edge. I don't have a strop, but I will use the side of my leather work boot to finish the edge. A nice sharp chisel makes a great sound as you use it to pare away a few thousandths of hard wood.

I could have picked an easier piece of wood to hand dovetail. The highly figured wood comes with price in that it's extremely dense with no rhyme or reason to how the grain runs. A razor sharp chisel is a crucial piece to the puzzle of getting this small job done without wasting ones time.

The weather is starting to go downhill so I'm expecting work to start slowing down in the next few weeks. I'd like to be finished with the bulk of the master cabin within the next four weeks, and to be honest with you, I think that's doable. I'm kind of down to punch out type jobs and wrapping up some loose ends, so given that to do list, I think I'll put in another order for the rest of the plywood to finish the hallway, head, and kids bunk room.

My goal is to have the wood work for all the rooms complete by the time spring hits. I've started to put a dent in my stock pile of cherry lumber, and while I think I have enough to complete the Salon, I'm getting a little nervous. Now that the sap is down in our trees, I have five or six nice cherry's I think I'm going to harvest. One of the trees is going to be nothing but curly grain, and I think I'll use that to build the panel doors for the galley cabinets and the panels for the wheel house helm. I'll be needing that lumber by next winter, so I might need to do something drastic like building a small solar kiln to speed things up.

Bow Thruster

2010-11-26T18:37:00.004-05:00

If you ever look out in harbor some day and see a trawler that hopefully looks like the picture on my header. And if that trawler is in the middle of the harbor fairway doing doughnuts, you can have this baby to thank for that ability.

As posted earlier on fabricating the bow thruster tube, I'm going to have a bow thruster on my boat. My thruster is hydraulic and will run off of the live PTO on the main engine. Because the thruster is hydraulic, I can run the thing 24/7 if I want to. I don't have to worry about it over heating, or batteries going dead, solenoids failing, wire corrosion, bad connectors... you get my drift. I understand why most folks go with the electric thrusters, but in my opinion, the electric units are a distant second place to a hydraulic unit.

Fluid power is bullet proof, idiot proof, and lasts a stinking long time with extremely low maintenance. The best thing about hydraulic powered equipment, is that it's there when you need it with power to spare for as long as you need power.

This unit was built by Key Power Equipment, and I can't say enough good things about those folks. There's a link on this page if you want to contact them.

Master cabin cabinet doors

2010-11-20T16:16:00.015-05:00

If you're ever in the market to get your fingers bobbed, grab a six pack of tall boys and come on over to my shop where you can play around with the wood shaper. The wood shaper has a 3 hp motor and whirls some heavy bits around at 12,000 rpm. The sound made by the bits spinning is almost as impressive as the wood that pukes out the discharge shoot. The shaper is a nice tool I bought about 20 years ago while I was renovating house's, and it's becoming quite the handy item on the big boat build.

The doors I built for the three cabinets in the master cabin are straight forward cabinet style doors. They are what I'd call frame and panel doors consisting of styles and rail pieces with a raised panel. These doors are overlay doors meaning the sit on top of the cabinets face frame vs a flush door that would fit within the face frame. Overlay doors are much easier to build and require a tenth of the precision that flush doors require. The method of joinery I'm using is called cope and stick. Basically one cuts a grooved profile in the panel side of all the styles and rails, then you cope the rail ( top and bottom horizontal pieces) to fit into that profile. The panel then floats in that frame you just created. It's a pretty nice looking door and adds a little more detail than one would get by using a flat plywood panel.

I've built some doors for some other projects lately, and on those projects I used 1/4" plywood for the panels. On the boat build, I've decided to invest more of my time and build raised panels for all the cabinets ( well at least the cabinets in the master cabin and probably the galley). Because the raise panel is a solid wood panel, I had to build the doors to allow for seasonal movement of the panel. The air is pretty dry here now that we are in the late fall time, so if fit the panel on the loose side. I gave myself 1/4" gap all around the panel to allow the panel to "float" within the frame. I cut some pieces of 1/4" foam backer rod and stuffed the backer rod in to the groove of the style and rail before I assembled the door. The backer rod holds the panel centered in the frame while allowing it to expand and contract as humidity changes. After I get all the finish on the doors, I might go back and put a dab of glue in the center of the rail @ the center of the panel. Since wood expands across the grain, a little bit of glue at this location will allow the panel to expand while helping with any rattle I might get when the door closes. If one would glue the panel tight all the way around the style and rail frame, it wouldn't be long before the expanding panel would destroy the frame. Before I assembled the doors I put a coat of finish on all the panels. If I didn't finish the panel prior to assembly, a line of unfinished wood would show up once the panel started to expand or contract. I clamped some boards to the edge of the work bench to help keep the doors square while I assembled them. I then checked the diagonals to assure the door was perfectly square before I clamped them.

After I assembled the doors, I gave each door three coats of urethane sanding with 320 grit between coats. I used a self closing hinge that holds the door shut. I don't think I'll put much faith in these hinge's holding the door shut once the boat experiences some weather, so I'll install some catches' of some style to make sure the doors stay shut. While the drawers have no pull hardware, I'm thinking of installing some pulls on the doors.

Dutchman

2010-11-14T18:50:00.009-05:00

After edge gluing the boards that are to be the top to the sink base for the master cabin, I soon realized the top had some flaws. I had already cut the top to size and had routed the sink cut out, and because of the work I had invested, I decided to make use of the flaws in the wood.

The top had a few knots in it, and after looking at them with a little more thought to the long term viability, I decided the knots might not stay put. I knew of the knots before I had glued the boards, but I thought they were live branch knots vs dead branch knots. Two of the knots were questionable, and one was for sure a dead branch knot. Dead branch knots tend to fall out of the wood at some point while live branch knots usually stay put. I decided that on this piece, I would deal with the knots by inlaying a repair I've always called a Dutchman.

A Dutchman is a piece wood inlay that replaces the defect. The idea behind the Dutchman is that it is a legitimate repair that adds character to the wood. If you can't make a wood joint invisible, you should highlight the joint is another way to look at this type of repair. The Dutchman type repair seems to have lost it's appeal with the wide spread use of plywood and it's near defect free surface, but one can find these inlay repairs on lots of early period furniture.

To make the Dutchman, I first made a couple of templates that I would use to shape the inlay pieces. There is no rhyme or reason to the shape of the inlay, so I just went with whatever popped into my head. The easiest and fastest way for me to do inlay work like this is by using my router. Once the templates are cut, I use an inlay tool that works with the router. I clamp the template over the piece to receive the inlay, and route out the shape. I then remove a bushing on the inlay tool, and using the same template, route the inlay piece in a scrap piece of wood. I part the inlay piece off of the scrap wood using the table saw. A little sanding on the edge's, brush on some glue, then tap the inlay piece into the recess with a dead blow mallet. A perfect fit every time. I then sand the inlay flush using an air powered dual action sander.

Some people need to have a flawless piece of work, but I kind of like the character that a few knots or a repair such as a Dutchman adds to some of my work. I really like the occasional knot as long as I'm sure it will not drop out. But if one thinks the knot is in jeopardy, I think a Dutchman is a legitimate solution.

Drawers Complete

2010-11-03T21:29:00.005-04:00

I have the drawers finished and fitted in the case.

I decided to put some urethane finish on the bed, drawers, and hull liner to protect the wood while I work in the master cabin. The wood gets stained, oil spots from my air tools, and like things are going to cause me more work, hence the finishing work. I've got some of the drawers filled with some tools, screw selection and other odds and ends that I'm using while I build the master cabin. Storage is a good thing. I fitted the plywood support for the mattress, so now I have a large platform I can use as a work bench.

If I had the drawer project to do all over again ( actually, I will as I work my way through the boat), the only thing I'll do different will be to modify the locking notch in the drawers, and use a little tighter fit between the drawer side and the drawer case. Other than that, I'm good with the design.

I'm going to build the sink vanity, my cabinet and desk, and the doors for the three cabinets that are in the master cabin. Once those builds are complete, I'm going to sheath the guest cabin and bathroom, then build out those two rooms.

I'm still in the dark as to what type of ceiling I'm going to put in these three rooms. I have been leaning towards beaded board ceilings painted white, but I'm not sure. I've framed the ceilings with the intention of a beaded board ceiling, but I'd like to explore more typical head liner material. If anyone has any experience with installing cloth head liner material, let me know what you think. I won't be installing any of the ceiling panels until the end of the build due to work that has to be done in those areas.

Drawers

2010-10-25T21:06:00.012-04:00

My drawer count at press time stands at 15 drawers in the master cabin: 12 under the bed, and three more at Shannon's dressing/vanity table. We've got a fairly large kitchen at our house, and we only have nine drawers in that kitchen. Needless to say, I'm getting all pumped up at how much storage space I'm squeezing into the master cabin.

I copied the drawer design that is on our 28' Carver cruiser boat. That design has served that boat well for 33 years with no failures. The design is extremely simple and uses no expensive hardware. I had thought about using metal slides with bearings, but given the odd size of the drawer depth, too much modification would have to happen to the parts. I also wasn't to psyched about dropping $200.00 on hardware that I would have to modify. So I went with a sliding dovetail to connect the drawer front to the drawer sides, an plastic guide that rides in a shop built hardwood track. The fronts are solid Cherry, the sides are 1/2" Cherry plywood left over from the paneling, the bottom is 1/4" Birch, and the back is more of the 1/2" Cherry ply. I had quite a nice pile of Cherry plywood scrap left over from paneling the master cabin, and the drawer project pretty much wiped out what I had left. These drawers are an overlay design.

I had to sort of think like a production guy and try to mass produce my parts for this rather large job. The first step was to measure all the rough openings and label them 1-15. I then developed a cut list for the fronts and sides. Once the fronts and sides were milled and cut I laid out where the sliding dovetail socket would be located. I laid out the dovetail so that there would be 3/16" of a gap between the side of the drawer and the face frame of the drawer chest. 3/16" is a little more gap than I would prefer, but I can always go back and install a filler piece if I feel the drawer wanders to much while opening or closing. Given that this is all wood, I have to give myself a little cushion with the expansion and contraction that is going to happen. I'd rather err on caution.

The first cut I made was the dovetail socket in the drawer front. I did this work on my home made router table/ glorified box that I can hang my router off of. The real money maker on my home made router table is the fact that I borrow the fence off of my shaper witch gives the router table a fine level of accuracy. Being able to micro adjust the fence gives me quite a level of precision for this type of work. The next cut was to route the dovetail pins in the drawer sides. This cut is where the micro adjustable fence comes in handy. Once all the socket and pins were machined I laid out and machined the 1/4" grooves for the bottom to ride in. The next cut was to machine a dado in the drawer side to accept the drawer back. The final cut was a 3/4" x 1/4" deep dado on the bottom of the drawer sides where the side meets the drawer front. This dado is what causes the drawer to drop over the face frame when closed, thus preventing the drawer from opening when things start rocking and rolling. I machined all the grooves and dado cuts using my table saw and a Freud dado set.

The assembly went pretty quick... about 20 minutes per drawer. Once I was ready to assemble, I measured for the drawer bottom and drawer back, then cut these two last parts. I sanded the insides of all the drawer parts with 220 right before I assembled. I applied glue to all the dovetail pins and glue to the dado that holds the back. I then slid the drawer side into the drawer front. I machined the dovetails so that I would have to only tap them home with my fist vs having to drive them with a mallet. Even with that tolerance, once the glue was applied I did have to persuade a few with a dead blow mallet. I then slid the bottom piece into the grooves, slid the drawer back into the dado, used a bar clamp to pull the sides tight against the back, then pinned the sides to the back with my pneumatic brad nail gun using 1" brads. I then laid the drawer upside down on the bench, checked the diagonals, then pinned the bottom to the back. The final step was to wipe off any glue.

I've yet to decide what kind of pull I'm going to use. Since I'm on a budget, I think I'm going to route a finger pull on the inside bottom edge of the drawer for a pull. A cove bit is what I've got in mind. I'm still going to look at store bought pulls, but I'd rather save the money. Having been in residential construction all my career, I've kind of learned a lesson watching others build houses they cannot afford. " It's easy to spend it early". I've seen too many people get in pissing matches with their builder because they blew their wad too early in the game. I kind of like the flush look with now hardware on the drawer face.

I'm going to get a few coats of finish on the drawers before I install them. I'll attach the plastic guide, then make sure the drawer fits. I designed the rail so that the plastic guide sits 3/4 above the rail. I figure I'll have to do a little block plane work on some of the rails to loosen up the rail/guide fit so it's not an interference fit.

Anyway, the drawer build was a pretty big job and I'm glad I've got it behind me. I've got to build my desk and cabinet, then I've got to build the sink base for the master cabin sink. Once I've got those last three jobs finished, I'll bung all the screw holes and get some finish on things to start protecting the wood.

I decided to rout a finger pull in the drawer fronts. The more I thought about it, the more I felt a finger pull would fit well with the look of the cabin. I'll probably do the same finger pull on the cabinet doors. I used a 1/2" cove bit with a bearing to route the pull. The pull feels fine on the prototype drawer, and with it's 3" length, ones fingers find it easily. On the larger drawers, I routed two pulls.

Master Cabin Bed

2010-10-21T20:41:00.012-04:00

I'm working on the bed in the master cabin, and I feel as if I'm making some good progress.

The face frames for the drawers ( 12 drawers) is complete as is the panel foot board. I used plywood for the center partition on the bed so I'd have a place to hang the drawer guide off of. I framed the mattress support out of 1 3/4" stock using pocket screws. While the bed is becoming a stout piece of furniture, everything about the bed is modular and able to be taken apart in relatively large pieces. I could probably dis-assemble the whole thing in about 1/2 of an hour.

The mattress support and bed rail are cantilever over the chest of drawers by about 4". This has proven to be a nice detail as it lets you get right against the bed while not having your toes hit the drawers. It just makes the room feel more comfortable. The cantilever also made the bed/drawers attachment much easier along with fabricating the radius. Because I now have wires in the head board, it would not be too difficult to incorporate some small LED lights in the cantilever to illuminate the drawers if the lighting needed to be improved to see into the drawers.

The outside rail for the bed finished out at 5" tall. I used pocket screws to assemble the two bent laminated pieces to the rail sections and I'm extremely happy with how the joints look. Ignoring the difference in the grain, one would be hard pressed to see the joint itself. I used three pocket screws per joint, and I also applied a little glue to each piece. The bed rail is extremely rigid, and while one would have to be careful if it ever had to be removed, the piece would fit through either the engine room door, or the door to the head and into the guest cabin.

I held the bed rail down 3/4 " below the mattress support framing. I've always figured on using an 8" foam mattress, but sitting on the rail, and looking at how other things are fitting together, I could probably get away with a 6" tall mattress.

I incorporated a book shelf of sorts into the head board, along with a place to have two LED reading lights. Instead of robbing the natural light from the port lights, we decided to not have a top shelf on the book case/headboard so light would have an easier time getting past the book case. I fabricated a fiddle to the base of the book case, and one rail across the front to hold in whatever gets put on the shelf. The reading lights, with their 3" base, will fit between the fiddle and the rail.

The reading lights were originally going to be installed on the hull liner above the book case shelf. I ordered some lights with a long flexible neck, and after putting them up on the liner, I felt that the looked like crap. I scrapped that design, and had to come up with a better location. Putting the lights on the head board would have made them too close to the pillow, so I built three mini columns for a place to install the lights. The mini columns turned into a support bracket for the book case rail, so this is how the book case came to be. I had to fix my screw up with the wire location, so I cut a dado in some stock, and made a wire chase that I screwed to the hull liner. The wood wire chase's look OK, and was a much better alternative to removing the hull liner and pulling new wire.

Building of all the drawers that will reside in the master cabin is the next item on the to do list.

Bending wood

2010-10-16T16:58:00.007-04:00

I'm still doing wood work in the master cabin, and I've been focusing in the bed.

The bed sits on a chest of drawers ( twelve drawers in total). Because our sink is in the master cabin, the walking path between the bed and sink needed to be "just so" in order for me to feel comfortable walking between the two. I moved the bed aft off the center line about 7 inches. The other design feature I wanted to build into the bed was having radius corners at the foot board to help navigate between the sink and the bed. It's amazing how more comfortable it is to walk past a radius corner vs a right angle corner. This, like other projects on the boat, is a fight for inches.

My first inclination was to cut multiple kerfs in the radius pieces to achieve the bend. Because one will see those kerf cuts, I decided not to go that route. I decided to laminate multiple pieces together and bend them around a form.

I re sawed stock into 1/8" staves to get the pieces I would need to do the laminating. I had problems cold bending the staves so I decided to steam bend them with a thrown together steamer and steam box.

I built the steamer out of a piece of square tubing witch I fabricated a base, a lid, and a nipple to accept a piece of radiator hose. The steam box was built out of duct tape and some old 2" rigid insulation I had laying around. I drilled some 1/4" holes in the side of the box to insert welding rods to make shelves for the lumber to sit on. My wife's meat thermometer put a high tech look to the whole contraption.

Once the box got up to 212 degrees, it only took about 20 minutes for the wood to act like a piece of rubber. I had to work quick to get the glue on then get the pieces bent around the form. Another person sure would have been handy, but I managed to pull it off.

Port Light Trim

2010-09-24T21:15:00.011-04:00

Making the trim rings for the port lights was a fun job. A few design issues on how best to cover the plywood paneling with the trim ring was the only real snafu on this project, but once the bugs were figured out, they went together pretty quickly.

I had to do a little searching to find some 10" wide stock to make the trim ring or else I'd be faced with having to edge glue some boards together to get the width I wanted.

The first step was to make a template of the trim ring. I made the template out of some 1/2" Cherry scrap plywood.

I used the template to mark the stock, then rough cut the ring on my band saw.

I then screwed the rough trim ring to the template, and routed it to match the template with a flush trimming bit.

Since the trim ring is screwed to the plywood paneling, I had to hide the edge of the plywood by extending the inner form of the trim ring by 1/2". I cut some pieces to shape on the band saw, glued them to the trim ring, then used the router to cut them flush once the glue cured.

The next step was to round everything over with a 3/8 radius rounding bit

Before I had installed the plywood paneling I had glued a closed cell gasket to the port light frame to prevent sweating. Once the paneling was in place, the paneling compressed the gasket against the port light frame. Now that the trim ring is installed, the trim ring also compresses the gasket due to the 1/2" ring extension I glued to the inner form of the trim ring. I feel that condensation on the port light frames will be a non issue.

In this last picture you can see how I laminated the extension piece on to the trim ring to hide the plywood edge. The last piece of the port light window frame condensation issue will be pretty straight forward I think. I'll need to find a piece of rubber channel to fit over the 3/16" frame edge prior to me installing the glass. Once that last edge ( witch you can see in the last picture) is covered, I doubt very much I'll get any condensation on the window frame. I might get some sweating on the glass, but none on the frame. The last thing I want is staining on the wood from sweating metal. The trim ring will come off when Install the glass witch should be later this Winter. I like not having the glass in so I can hear the radio I have down in the shop.

Home Grown

2010-09-23T20:48:00.006-04:00

Every time I do a clearing job and have the ability to take some Cherry trees, I bring them to my neighbor, and he saws them into lumber for me. I have two stacks this size of Cherry that's been air drying in the loft of the shop for a few years , and it's time I finally get to use some of it.

If I were to guess, I'd guess that I have well over a thousand board feet stashed away in the barn. It's a good feeling to finally be able to use some of this fine lumber and get on with some finish wood working.

Even though this is not perfectly clear lumber one might find in a wood workers supply house, I do get quite a bit of interesting looking grain including curly and birds eye. I try to be keep a close eye on things when I'm pulling a piece out of the pile, but until you run it through the planer, its always a mystery how it will look once planed. I love the straight grained clear lumber, but I also love the wild crotch grain or the funky look you get from the birds eye grain. Cherry has always been my favorite wood to work with. It machines well, glues and holds a screw great, and I love how it darkens with age.

Going the rough sawn lumber route is a little more work for me, but the price is right. I love not having to head off to the lumber supply house and I for sure love the fact that I'm keeping more cash in my pocket.

Finish lumber

2010-09-12T20:28:00.008-04:00

I got a decent start this weekend on getting some finish lumber installed in the master cabin. I'm using Cherry veneer plywood for the hull sides and partitions in the master cabin, and a lesser quality ( maybe Birch) for the head, hallway, and kids bunk room.

While I still think the engine room's steel door jamb could have been a few shades lighter, I'm happy as to how it looks vs the white I had initially painted the jamb. Looking at in in this picture, I must say I think it works fine.

I'm using #12 1 1/2" brass wood screw to fasten all the plywood. I have a Fuller tapered drill set that does a nice job countersinking for the screw and boring for the wood bung all in one pass. I've used some cheaper tools for this type of work, and in my opinion the cheaper stuff is junk and not worth ones time messing with. If I'd have to guess, I'd guess I've used 150 screws to install the master cabin panels, and most of those will have to be plugged with bungs. I'll cut the bungs from scrap Cherry lumber, then part them on the table saw. I'll probably use a sharp chisel to pare the bung down close, then finish sand the bung with a DA sander to get it flush. I'm a little worried about glue stains, but I think if I wipe each bung after tapping it home with a damp cloth, I should keep glue staining to a minimum. I'm using a 1/4" x 1 1/4" batten to cover all the butt joints, so I won't have to bung those screws.

I scribed then I belt sanded to the scribe line on all the panels are perpendicular to another panel. I'm happy with how the fit and finish has turned out as a playing card wont' fit in any of those perpendicular joints.

I used a lower grad plywood where the bed is going because I thought I might be a sheet short. Turns out I was fine on how much material I used, but I'm not complaining as you won't see any of the cheaper plywood as it's behind the headboard of the bed.

Now that the master cabin space is defined, and the foam is disappearing behind that nice Cherry plywood I will now start laying out for the bed, and the various cabinets I'm going to have in the cabin. I chose to have a sink in each cabin, vs a one sink in the head. The size of the master cabin and the size of the bed make installing the cabinet for the sink the next order of business. I started looking at some layout tonight, and I might end up moving the bed aft a few inches to make the pathway between the bed and the sink more comfortable. Either way, I'll buy a sink this week and mock up a cabinet install to see how it fits in relation to the bed and being able to walk past the bed. It's important for me to feel comfortable as I walk around the cabin, and two or three inches in the right spot can make all the difference in how the room feels ( in my amateur opinion).

I think I'm going to do some cabinet building in the master cabin before I begin paneling the rest of the hull ( kids bunk room, head, and hallway). I had thought I'd not be able to bung one panel on the engine room bulkhead as I might have had to remove it to get my engine control cables from the wheel house to the engine. Now I think I'll route the cables a little different than planned and won't have to remove the panel.

The devil's in the detail

2010-09-03T18:48:00.005-04:00

I thought I was pretty much wrapped up with the wiring and plumbing to the point of where I could begin installing the Cherry plywood on the hull sides and partitions.

I was looking at the route of one of my water tank fill lines on the starboard side, and started to get concerned that I was making things a little too tight in regard to the fill lines and the lines for my future air conditioning unit. I decided to re route one of the water tank fill line to give me, what I consider, barely enough room to route the two cooling lines for my AC unit. Out comes the hole saw so I can create an 1 1/2" bore through frame #8. Hole sawing complete, so now I have to de-burr the hole, put a couple of layers of epoxy primer, give the primer a day to set up, then top coat with a couple layers of acrylic enamel. That little hole slowed things up a minimum of one day.

I also was looking at the steel door jamb of the engine room door, and somehow the bright white door jamb was not going to look so good next to the ever darkening Cherry interior. I decided to paint the door jamb brown to make things "flow" a little smoother as far as the eye was concerned. I had some left over acrylic urethane from another project, and while it could have been a little lighter in shade, I have formally called it good enough.

I picked up a few hundred #12 1 1/2 brass wood screws from Fastenal today, and barring any more nit picking, I should begin some finishing work after the holiday weekend.

Water tanks: fill pipes, vent lines, and manifolds

2010-08-26T20:46:00.011-04:00

I have eight water tanks under the sole of the forward cabins. The total capacity of the tanks is about 380 gallons. I guess I'll find out for sure what the capacity is once I fill all of them and begin using water. But for right now, I'm sticking with the story of 380 gallons in eight stainless steel tanks.

Because I have 8 tanks I decided to connect all the tanks together via the supply line feeding the fresh water pump. I installed a gate valve at each tank giving me the ability to isolate any one of the eight tanks. I would hate to have a water leak in one tank, and have that leak drain all the tanks. If I do develop a tank problem, I want to be able to isolate it quickly then deal with it on my terms and time. In order to totally isolate the tanks on the suction side, I had to be able to isolate them on the vent and fill side too. Manifolds were the easiest way I could think to accomplish what I had to do.

My deck fill line is 1 1/2" that manifolds to 1" that will fill each tank. I used 1" PVC ball valves and pressure fittings to build the manifolds.

My vent lines are 1/2" leaving the tank, then bush up to 3/4" tube witch goes into 3/4 ball valves, then into a 1" manifold. 1" stainless steel welded into the deck with a goose neck completes the vent. Again, I used PVC ball valves and pressure fittings for all the fittings.

My suction line feeding my pump is 3/4" wire reinforced tube rated for food service. All the ball valves on the suction line are 3/4" brass.

For the vent lines I welded 1" stainless steel into the the hull, then welded a goose neck on the vent above the deck. I epoxied 1" PVC couplers on to the 1" stainless thru hull, then bushed down to my 1" PVC manifold, bushed down to 3/4" slip x thread ball valves, threaded in 3/4" x 1/2" barbs, then went to the each tank with 1/2" tube.

The deck fill is 1 1/2" stainless deck fill bolted the the deck going into a 1 1/2" flexible PVC tubing, that leads to the 1 1/2" sch. 40 manifold.

I had to position the fill manifold ball valves so they would be flush behind the hull liner. The valve handles are easy to operate even though one is turned facing the hull sheathing. I'll have an easy to get to access port in the hull liner behind a cabinet to operate the valves if the need happens.

In some of the pictures, you can see the 1 1/2" bilge pump discharge lines plumbed next to the fill manifold. I have two 1 1/2" bilge pump discharge lines on each side of the hull. More on that later.

All my "behind the wall" construction is done regarding my water tank fill and vent. For that matter all the work under the sole concerning the water tanks is also complete. I'm getting pretty close to start installing the finished hull liner material.

Cabin Foam

2010-05-30T15:00:00.007-04:00

While waiting for parts for the Carver boat, I finished foaming the hull. I used 1800 board feet of material to foam the forward hull area, and I'd guess I have a net of 2+ inches on average, maybe closer to 3". As you can see from the pictures, I foamed down to the water line. I did not want to foam below the water line, but I did add insulating beads into my paint to try to minimize condensation below the water line. I did not have enough to foam the anchor chain locker, so I'm going to buy a small 200 board foot kit to foam that area. I was really not ready to foam the anchor locker as I've yet to paint the floor of the chain locker with a rubberized product. I think something like bed liner is what I'll be using to coat the chain locker floor. I will probably also fiberglass over the foam in the chain locker to help protect the foam from getting destroyed by the chain.

I decided to wire the boat after the foaming as I was not too keen on burying wire in the foam. I know I'll have a little bit of a fight getting conduits and wire in now that the foam is in place, but I did spend a day gluing cleats to the hull in strategic spots so I'd be able to attached wires, water lines, hydraulic lines and conduits. My plan as of now, is to keep all my electrical stuff up in the ceilings, and all my water and hydraulic lines lower in the hull below the water line. I'm going to try and use conduit as much as possible, but I'm not opposed to stapling some wires to the framing. My biggest concern is to protect everything and be aware as to not run a screw through any wire as I finish the interior.

I'm going to foam the anchor locker myself. I'm too far into the foam to bring in a contractor to do such a small job as the chain locker, but I will not do the wheel house and salon myself. I'll be bringing in a contractor to finish those areas some time next year. While I'm foaming the chain locker, I'm going to foam the engine side of the engine room door. Right now, the engine room door is my weak link in sound deadening, and with a foam job( or left over rock wool), and some sort of liner, I think I'll be able to quadruple it's sound rating. I'll have a little engineering involved in keeping the door's grease fittings accessible, but I'm not to worried about figuring that one out. My main goal with the engine room door is to give it the ole college try and see what I can do about minimizing sound transmission. If you look at the picture of the engine room door, you can see how thick that wall has become...thick with insulation ( about 7").

The difference in the hull is amazing now that the foam is in. Not only is it much more quiet, the temperature difference is much more noticeable. Once I close things up with the hatch and port lights, I doubt I'll be able to hear any outside noise.

I purchased my foam from www.betterenergy.com, and I was totally happy with the service I got from Michael.

Detour

2010-05-02T13:40:00.008-04:00

I've got to take a little detour on the yacht build to take care of some other business. Spring has for sure sprung in my neck of the woods, and work on the yard and work on our 28' cruiser is demanding my time.

The boating season officially opens this weekend as this is when my contract begins on my harbor space. Our plastic cruiser boat is a 1977 Carver that I restored about eight years ago. Late last season, we had a catastrophic failure of the gimbal ring on the TRS drive, and it's a little past time that I get working on it.

I bought a used transom assembly off of Ebay that I am going to re build. Yesterday, I removed my stern drive, and transom assembly off of the Carver, and this morning I steam cleaned all of the parts and started getting things ready for the re build. I'm putting new bellows, gaskets, lower and upper pins, bearings, and seals in the used transom assembly. I'm also going to paint all of the parts with Acrylic Urethane paint while I have everything apart.

I've made a list of parts I think I need but I'm still going to put the transom assembly in a box and bring it down to the local marine repair shop and have him do a parts take off and order what I need. Once I get everything back, I think I can have it all back together and back on the boat in two days time.

While I'm waiting on my parts to come in, I'll paint the stern drive and transom assembly. I'm also going to give the boats bright work a couple of coats of urethane, and some general cleaning. At the end of last season, I purchased a galvanic isolator that needs to be installed along with a new cranking battery and two batteries for the house. In three weeks time, I should be ready to splash her.

Harvest Moon has been a good boat for me, but I'm going to throw a for sale sign on her this season. I need the money from the sale to buy some parts for the yacht. While I dread being boat less for a season, I'm going to commit to launching the yacht for the 2012 boating season.

The shop is about as full as it can get with having Harvest Moon in my working bay. I've always like the size of Harvest Moon, and to be honest with you, it's been plenty of boat for us with 28' LOD, and her 10' beam. But seeing Harvest Moon sitting next the the yacht, motivates me that much more to get the yacht done and love all that space I'm going to have.

I painted the the new transom assembly and stern drive today. I'm going to give them a day or so to cure, then I'll assemble everything this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have her out of the shop by the middle of the week. I'm starting to have some withdrawal from not working on the yacht, and I'm anxious to get Harvest Moon back in the water.

Expansion Tank

2010-04-28T15:09:00.000-04:00

My main engine is cooled with a keel cooler welded to the hull. Because coolant will expand as it warms up to operation temperature, I needed to give the coolant a place to go without building pressure on the system and causing the fill cap to burp off coolant.

The expansion tank is at the highest elevation of the cooling system. This will allow me to get air out of the system and also use the expansion tank as the fill point for the cooling system. I made the tank out of a 12" piece of thin walled pipe. Welding a place for the pressurized fill cap, end caps, mounting brackets, level check sight glass, connector fitting on the bottom, and drain fitting on the bottom plus and extra fitting on top was all it took to make the tank. Well I might as well throw in finding the pipe, getting the pipe, cutting the pipe, cutting the end caps, fabricating the fill neck and mounting brackets, air testing, sand blasting, and painting. Now that I think of it, building the expansion tank was a pain in the ass, and if I had to put a pencil to it, I'd say I have 12 hours in it. I could have purchased one for a dump truck for about $250.00 but given my nature of tripping over a dollar to save a dime, I decided to fabricate mine.

I Installed a sight glass in the tank to make checking fluid level easy. Due to height constraints, peering down the fill cap would be difficult, a dip stick would be a pain in the ass, so the sight glass, hands down, is the way to go.

I built the tank a couple of years ago, and now that I have the engine room finished sheathed, I can go ahead and permanently mount the tank. I was able to make the permanent connections to the keel cooler from the engine, and also all the connections to the expansion tank.

I mounted the tank to the bulkhead by using studs welded to the framing. I messed up on one set in regard to how far the studs projected and ending up having to use couplings on the studs then bolting the tank to the coupling. I wanted every part of the tank to be higher than the engine coolant tank, and while I was cutting it close, all the elevations worked out fine. The street 90 at the bottom of the tank is 3/4" higher than the street 90 in the engine.

Oh how nice it is to finally see projects going from the shop shelves to their final resting spot on the boat.

Sea Chest Complete

2010-04-26T20:18:00.006-04:00

I finished the sea chest, and installed it.

I've been hunting for a used sea strainer, and finally found one on Ebay. The dude I bought if from had purchased it for his boat then had a change of mind. The strainer is in new condition having never seen the water.

I welded a leg on to the manifold that I will screw on to the fixed panel that covers part of the fuel tank. I'll be able to access the fuel tank clean out without having to take the sea chest apart as the panel I'm using as a brace is adjacent to the access panel.

The final elevation of the top of the "T" is 1" below the water line ( DWL). You can see a line drawn on the fuel tank inspection cover that represents the DWL. I"ll have to extend a nipple up above the DWL, and put a cap on it. Maybe I'm not seeing something in my approach to using a T vs a 90, but I like being able to peek down into the "T" just to see what I can see. I also used a coupling on the end of the manifold that will have a plug in it, so I easily be able to expand my sea chest by adding on to the coupling/manifold. I can also expand the sea chest via the T, but I'd have to go with a self priming device due to elevation concerns.

I think I'm going to remove the plastic bowl on the sea chest and stash it away while I do more fitting out in the engine room. I also have to cut away the piece of angle under the third valve as it is no longer needed and is sort of in the way of the last valve. I think I'll extend the sole under the sea strainer now that I know what the final elevation is going to be. As you can see from the picture, I have enough room to put the valve handles behind the sea chest. Having the handles in the rear is really dumb luck on my part, but nice in that the handles are out of the way and won't snag one as they move past the sea chest.

Now that the sea chest is complete, I can finalize the generator connections.

I like having all my thru hull fittings in one location that is easy to get to. Every time I enter the engine room, it will be impossible not to look at the condition of the sea chest.

Work Bench

2010-04-23T16:01:00.010-04:00

I'm kind of in need of a quick easy project ( if there is such a thing on a yacht build), so I decided to build a work bench for the engine room. I have quite a few engine room projects coming up and I want to be able to sit comfortably while I get things done. I'm also getting tired of having tools and parts scattered everywhere, so I'm also contemplating some cabinets and a tool box in the not to distant future.

I don't have any decent plywood laying around the shop, but I do have about 1600 board feet of rough sawn Cherry that's been air drying for the last three years. It's a bit more work to have to joint boards and edge glue them together vs sawing some plywood, but I don't mind. If I can save myself $50.00 for the cost of a sheet of plywood and a trip to the supply house, I'm happy to use some of the rough sawn lumber I have.

It's been a while since I've messed in wood so I had to go over the jointer and make sure it was tuned up. I only had to make a slight adjustment to get the two beds parallel, but other than that, all looked good. After I planed some stock to 3/4", I ran the stock through the table saw a few times to straighten it out a bit. I cut the stock a few inches long, then I ran it all through the jointer to finish the edge. Using a biscuit joiner with #2 biscuits to reinforce the joints, I glued up the panel.

After the glue had cured, I flattened the panel with my air sander using 80 grit paper. My next step was to go over the panel with a DA sander a few times, finishing up with 220 grit. I rounded over the outside edge of the panel, and applied a fiddle to the starboard side. I put a fiddle on this edge since anything that can roll this direction has a good chance of landing in the bilge underneath the engine. Retrieving things from this area would be a pain so I'm trying to head things off with the fiddle.

I'm putting a satin finish on the work bench just to help it stay a little clean. I've never had a finish on a work bench as most of my work benches are steel. I want a wood surface on the boat so I'm not limited as to what I can do at the bench. Steel benches and wood working tools don't mix so well, so wood makes the most sense.

Installing the bench against #9 bulkhead was about as straight forward as one can get. I did have to mess around with the height of my stool/bench combination. The height of the bench came to 33", and the height of the stool will be 23". This is a comfortable height and allows me to sit upright while not hitting my my head on frame #10. I screwed cleats to the fuel tank and #9 bulkhead to support the bench and also fabricated a leg out of stainless steel tube. If the need arises, the bench will be very easy to remove and replace.

I bought a 5" vise to install on the bench, but after sitting the vice on the bench I was not happy with it. The vice dominated the bench, and just plain took up too much room. A smaller vice would not be the answer, as I hate being limited by having too small a vice for such an important tool. A vice is one of my most used tools in my shop, and I want one on my boat. I compromised with myself, and found another location. Aft of the bench where the sole steps up will actually become a good location for the vice. I can sit comfortably on the step and work at the vice. I'm not as limited to the size of work as I would have been in the work bench corner. I can also remove the sole on the step below the vice and pick up another 10" of depth if need be. I"ll have to remove the sole around the vice, reinforce things, then re install a dedicated piece of sole that the vice bolts through. By doing this, I can leave the vice bolted in place and remove pieces of sole to a gain access under the sole for maintenance and future work.

Even though the bench is not as large as I'm used too, it's going to be nice having a work bench on my boat.

Engine room sole

2010-04-05T06:51:00.012-04:00

The engine room sole is sheathed with 1/4" aluminum diamond plate.

I was planning on using plywood for the sole due to cost concerns on my part, but having found this plate at the scrap yard has allowed me to go with, what I consider, a more attractive sole. Because of being in the engine room, and also I believe it could be a common event to have to lift pieces of the sole off for maintenance I bolted wood firing to my steel framing and then attach the aluminum sheathing to the wood. If I had screwed the aluminum sheathing directly to the steel I had visions in the not to distant future of broken screws, corrosion where screws penetrated the steel, and just more difficult maintenance in general. Having wood to screw the aluminum in to will also give me a little vibration dampening in my opinion. I'm using #12 x 1.50" stainless steel wood screws that I'm countersinking as my fastener. The sole is complete as I write this post, and to date, I've used 150 of the stainless screws to fasten the aluminum down.

I wanted as much level area in the engine room as I could build, so I stepped the sole framing up as the sole moves aft in the engine room. These steps, while some might not like, give me places of access underneath the sole, and also give me a place to sit while I'm in the engine room. Whenever I give friends tours of the progress, almost everyone sits on one of these steps. This picture to the left shows the platform I built for my tool box, and my hydraulic system reservoir.

I think the largest piece of material I've used for the engine room sole is a finished cut piece of 24"x 24". I don't want to be having to man handle large pieces when I'm I have to access under the sole. I would rather be able to lift smaller pieces, to gain access and still be kneeling or sitting on the level sole. The down side to having all these smaller pieces is I used quite a few screws.

I'm getting a pretty good feel on how the engine room is going to layout and I think I've found locations for the various equipment I'm going to need. I'm going to dedicate the port side of the room up against the main bulkhead at frame #9 as my area for my work bench. While the head room is around 5"4" in this area, I'll be able to use a short stool with a lower work bench to be able to work in a comfortable position. I'll post more about the engine room as a whole once I begin to install the various components.

The last piece of the sole for me to build is the area over the stuffing box. I'm almost out of aluminum plate so I have to give it some thought on how I want to treat this area so I don't waste any material. I think I'm going to hinge a part of this area so I can gain quick access to the stuffing box for maintenance, daily checks for leaks, and stuffing box temperature.

I have 4' 10" of head room on the starboard side of the engine, and 5' 2" on the port side of the engine. I have more headroom on the port side by my design as I knew this area would house my work bench. I'd love to have a stand up engine room, but on a boat my size, I think that would be almost impossible. I think once you get into the 50' range, stand up engine rooms start to appear. I'm totally happy with the size of the engine room, and very pleased with the head room I do have. I'll be able to easily do all my maintenance work in this space in comfort.

The scrap yard aluminum worked out great. There are some blemishes, and some cleaning that will have to be done. I know as construction progresses, the dings I put in the sole, will blend in to what was there. I'll probably never do much more than clean up the mess's I make. I have to say that I love the way the engine room is shaping up.

Sound Proofing the engine room

2010-04-01T05:56:00.010-04:00

The engine room received one more coating of paint on the hull and sole framing last weekend in preparation for starting the sound proofing. Well, I hope it's sound proofing, as it will be a real pain in the ass to re do this once the boat is launched.

My system for sound proofing is pretty basic. I foamed the metal ( see the last post), and now I'm attaching a 1" thick mineral wool board the the framing. Over this mineral wool I'll attach a perforated aluminum sheet as my finished wall material.

As best as I've learned, the idea behind sound dampening is to decouple the structure from the sound. Sound travels in waves and the idea behind getting rid of it is to try to absorb it. My system is to provide a barrier between the living space's and the engine room noise. My thoughts are that the sound will pass through the perforated aluminum then be absorbed by the mineral wool board and also by the foam underneath.

The mineral wool I'm getting is discarded seconds that came out of a large sheet metal fabrication shop. I'd love to have 3' x 5' boards, but I'm only able to get 2'x4' boards ( the price is right though). Because I'm not able to pick my size, I'm having to adjust my framing. In the areas I know I'm going to have to attache lots of conduits, or other mechanical items, I'm first installing plywood before installing the rock wool board. With the plywood on the hull framing ( 1/2" ply ), I don't have to worry about the rock wool laying out to hit the framing so there is almost no waste of the rock wool. I also have unlimited points of attachment for my future mechanical installations. For the ceiling though, I'm going to have to add a firing strip so the rock wool waste is minimized while I keep an eye on the weight I'm adding.

I've got a little of the product up and on the walls and part of the ceiling. I'm working in the corner where the generator will be installed, and I'm amazed at how well the sound seems to be vanishing from just having that small area installed. It's no longer necessary to wear ear plugs while working in the hull. The only drawback is that the engine room is starting to get hot from the heat from the lights.

The perforated aluminum looks fantastic and gives me just the gear head look I want for my engine room. Once the material is screwed to the wall, it stiffens up nicely. You have to look closely to see the rock wool underneath, so I feel good about the ability of the perforations to contain the rock wool while also letting the sound waves into the dampening zone. The open area of the perforated sheathing is 34%. I picked up some advice from the good posters at Metalboatbuilding.org on how the cut the stuff. It's so nice to be able to start seeing some finishing material finally going on.

Because the rock wool is 1" thick I'm going to have to fabricate some corner pieces or trim some areas out with aluminum angle. One of these areas is by the doors as you can see from this picture. I'm leaning towards angle in some areas, while in other areas, I'm going to try to brake ( bend a corner) the material in to an outside or inside corner.

I took a crack at bending some material into a corner, and it worked out OK. Having corner pieces makes the job look much more finished and I don't have to be as particular on the fit.

I had to add firing strips to the main area of the engine room ceiling. While I hate to loose another 3/4" of head room, I'm willing to take the trade as this allows my rock wool to go up with less waste. The frames for the boat are 30" on center, and my rock wool sheets are 24" x 48". I don't have the choice of 3' x 5' sheets so I added the firing strip to make things work better and get the most bang for my buck in regard to how much rock wool I have to buy.

I started out cutting the perforated aluminum with snips, but I've now switched over to my table saw. I added a board to the saws' fence so the 16 gauge material will not slide under the fence. The table saw does an excellent job of cutting the material and it looks like it was done on a shear.

You might have noticed I have some plywood installed under the rock wool. I have plywood over the fuel tanks to protect the paint job on the tank and also to give me a way to easily attach engine room components to the tanks. I plan for some cabinetry and shelving, among other things, to be installed on top of the tanks. The forward and aft water tight bulkheads also received 1/2" plywood. I installed plywood on the aft bulkhead due to the idea that my generator will sit on the starboard side, and my fuel transfer/polish manifolds and pumps will be on the port side. I don't know the exact layout of any of these components, so I put the plywood up to make it easier to attach the various bits and pieces of each system. I went with plywood on the forward bulkhead as this is the area where my work bench will be, and I want don't want to be limited to the bulkhead framing as the only points of attachment for various things.

I cut it a little close on my measurements for my fuel tank fill points. I wanted the fill lines to be as close to the outside hull sides as possible, and as you can see I achieved that. I had to hog out a bit of the rock wool, then push the aluminum in to get the two inch nipple to thread in. The rest of the assembly will fit just fine as the hull is leaning outboard at this area of the boat.

I'm pretty happy how the material bends and the fact that I'm able to fabricate some of the corner pieces I need. This picture is where the ceiling jumps up to accommodate my door. This detail is the same on both the forward and aft sections of the engine room. This detail also gives me three more inches of headroom over my work bench.

The room is about 70% complete in regard to fitting out the aluminum wall and ceiling sheathing, and 100% finished regarding the sole, so I decide to drop in the generator. The engine room is now completely closed off. I'm going to miss that large opening as it was easy to drop material into the space, and it also made things nice in regard to ventilation.

The engine room, for the most part, is sheathed. I still have to cover the seams with some trim, but I've yet to find a source or figured out what the trim will look like. I'm thinking I"ll go with a 1" piece with some sort of slight brake on both edges.

Foam

2010-03-16T06:26:00.003-04:00

I sprayed foam in the engine room and aft storage room otherwise known as the Lazarette.

I'm spraying a closed cell polyurethane fire retardant foam in these areas. The main reason for the foam is to stop condensation. Once the metal sees a temperature difference on the inside vs the outside, the metal will begin to condensate. Foam will insulate the metal thus preventing it from seeing the "other" temperature that will cause the "sweating".

I had spent about a month working in the engine room getting it ready for foam. I first finished painting the engine room with alkyd enamel paint. This required a manual scuffing of the primed surface so the paint would adhere. After painting the room, I bolted firing strips to the steel framing as points to attach my finish wall and ceiling material. I had debated running conduit below the foam, and even went as far as buying flexible conduit and electrical boxes to do this job. My past mistakes have taught me to not get too far ahead of myself, so I decided to attach all my conduits, pipes, wires, etc.. on the finished wall/ceiling surfaces. This will make for a more cluttered look in the engine room, but everything will be where I can get my fingers on it for maintenance and future work.

Spraying the foam is not really a do it yourself project, but I decided to do it anyway. Foaming was not as hard a job as spraying my paint, but it did require me to move at a quick pace so the material would not set up in the tip of the gun. I had bought an extra dozen tips just in case, and I'm glad I did as the tips began to clog and needed frequent replacing. I wish I had gotten more yield out of the 600 board foot kit, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how far the material went.

The next step for the engine room is sound deadening the room. My plan for sound proofing is to attach 1" Rock Wool boards to the framing then cover the Rock Wool with a perforated aluminum panel. The idea is that the sound waves will go through the perforations on the aluminum panel then get absorbed by the rock wool. Once I get the bulk of the sound proofing in the engine room, I can lower my generator down into the room, then weld the access hole shut, and seal the engine room for the last time.

Sea Chest- Final Resting Spot

2010-01-30T16:24:00.008-05:00

OK, I'm getting kind of tired of the re-work, but I had to move my sea chest location once again. I had abandoned the first location as the intake was to small, increased the size of the intake and moved the sea chest to the area in front of the generator. After doing some assembly, I realized that the sea chest was going to be to close to the water line, and I want it a below the water line. I also felt that having it in front of the generator was going to be a pain in the ass, and I'm sure I'd be regretting it years down the road as I banged into it while servicing the generator. So, as much as it pained me, I moved the sea chest again. I turned it 90 degrees, and moved it another foot away from the generator.

During my recent visits to the scrap yards ( selling scrap metal), I've been scrounging around for some for some 2" 316 stainless. No luck on finding some, so I had to break down and make a small purchase of some new material. Making sure all my parts were 316L was important to me so having to buy new material was not such a bad thing given I could assure quality.

The first line of business on the sea chest was building the manifold. I used a 12" piece of 2" along with two 1" x 4" nipples. I cut the nipples in half on my lathe so I ended up with the four pieces needed for my valves. Using a hole saw, I bored four holes in the 2"x12" nipple so I would be able to weld in the valve stubs. I was going to use a boring head to make the bores, but the hole saw did just fine by using the micro feed on my mill and running water on the bit to keep it cool.

Welding the 1" nipples in the manifold was pretty easy. I stood the 1" stubs on the work bench then lowered the 2" manifold on to the stubs and held the manifold up with blocks. This way I was able to keep the stubs plumb, level, and square with the manifold without having to come up with a clamping contraption. I tacked the stubs in place, then placed the manifold in the vice and welded her up. I made two passes around the each stub. I air tested the manifold to 40 psi and I'll be damned if it passed on the first try.

I bolted the stainless flange to the flange I welded into the hull, and just for kicks I tested to see if they were electrically isolated. The electric isolation test was good.

I've yet to find a used 2" sea strainer, so I'm unable to finalize the assembly. I'm going to need to brace the manifold both vertically and horizontally, but I can't make the brace until I know the final location of the end after the sea strainer is in place. I also think I can lower the manifold 2" by using a close nipple vs the 4" nipple I have between the ball valve and the "T". I'm going to keep my eyes open for another valve that with an overall length of 4" vs the 6" valves I have now. I really can't finalize any of this until I I have a sea strainer.

I'm very happy with how the sea chest looks, and more happy with it's location. This set up will be extremely easy to service and bring various water intakes on or off line as I need them. I went with a "T" vs a 90 on building the sea chest in case I had to blow a clog out of the intake while under way. I can screw a nipple down in to the "T" to get above the water line, and clear any thing away without having to get into the water. If I had used a 90, cleaning from the inside would be difficult at best.

Scrap yard finds for the engine room

2010-01-22T17:58:00.007-05:00

My excavating business is as poor as I've ever seen having been self employed for 20+ years. With my revenue down so low and my not wanting to not work on the boat even though I have much less cash to throw at the project, I've taken to visiting scrap yards looking for some material.

This post still reflects my working in the engine room, but I want to look at the value of utilizing used material.

Given the down turn in the economy, I had my mind set that I was going to have to sheath the engine room floor in plywood and probably paint it. While down at the scrap yard today unloading the fruits of me cleaning up around the shop, I noticed some aluminum diamond plate getting ready to be processed. The material was a double diamond plate pattern 3.5' x 7.5' x 1/4" thickness. There were 20 sheets, but from what I could remember five sheets would be plenty, so I went ahead and struck a deal for six sheets. We agreed on a price of $.80 per pound. For the six sheets my total costs were $300.00. The pattern of the diamond plate was nothing I'd ever seen before, and as you can see from this picture, it is a double diamond pattern. From here on out, I'm going to call it "Double D", or "DD". Personally, I am partial to "DD", and it just makes me happy thinking about it.

I also needed a 2" stainless ball valve for my sea chest, and a 1.5" stainless ball valve for my holding tank pump out station. This scrap yard had a large bin of stainless valves and it only took me a couple of minutes to find two I thought looked good. I paid $1.00 per pound for the valves so my total cost for the valves came to $18.00. Both valves were 316 grade.

Once back at the shop I took the valves apart, applied some lithium grease, re-assembled them, then air tested them to 40 psi. I only used 40 psi since I was using PVC for my air test, and in all honesty, the valves will see no more than a two or three psi of pressure.

I also made a call to my local metal supplier to see what the costs were on new 1/4" diamond plate aluminum sheets. I was quoted a price of $3.75 per pound. The sheets of diamond plate I purchased weighed around 375 lbs. With the new cost of $3.75 I figured I got $1400.00 worth of diamond plate for $300.00. I'm also going to estimate the value of the valves @ $175.00 and $150.00 respectively, for a total valve value of $325.00. By purchasing used material, I think I can figure the new value of the material at about $1700.00, but my total outlay for this material was only $318.00. Quite a nice savings in my opinion. I should also say that the scrap yard paid me $249.00 for the 2700 lbs of scrap I dropped off.

One more thing I should add about the valves is that they are rated at 1000 psi, and I think they are sch. 80 or sch. 120. I can say with confidence that these valves are what I would call "beefy" valves, and have what I would guess double the duty rating as any valve one might buy from a marine catalog.

The aluminum diamond plate I purchased was obviously used as a cat walk or some other industrial application. This is a great example of why metal is such a good building material. While this material could have been in heavy service for 20+ years, a little work on my part and it will clean up and look just like new. I also think that the aluminum diamond plate will make my engine room floor as fine as any of the so called high end production plastic yachts on the market.